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PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE. 



BY 



ROBERT R. HOWISON 

Author of a History of Virginia. 



PUBLISHED UNDER THE DIRECTION AND FOR BENEFIT 



OF 



THE FREDERICKBURG LIBRARY 



AND 



LYCEUM ASSOCIATION 



Printed and Published by 
RITFUS B. MERCHANT 

FREDERICKSBURG, VA. 

18SO. 



i 



,RH7? 



Notwithstanding careful proof-reading, a few typographical errors 
remain, but, as as they do not aftect the sense, no list of errata is 
deemed necessary. 



PAST, PRESENT AjYD FUTURE. 



\~E seeking to comply with the invitation of the Lecture Com- 
mittee ot our Library and Lyceum Association, and to lecture 
on the theme thus presented, I feel bound, as is the manner of 
all veracious historians, to begin at the beginning. But where the 
beginning is or ought to be may he a serious question. To quiet 
your alarm, however, ladies and gentlemen, let me say at once that 
I do not propose to follow the example of the profound and erudite 
Mr. Diederick Knickerbocker who, when he undertook to write the 
history of New York, under the Dutch rule, gave to his. readers 
three complete and rich preliminary chapters, in which he discussed 
the all-important question, how this world came to be created; dis- 
cussed, in fact, every theory, sage or wild, that has been announced 
concerning creation, from the days of Moses to the present time* 
In those high questions I do not feel bound to involve either you or 
myself in looking into the beginning of Fredericksburg. It will 
suffice to say that, after the lapse of some four hundred and fifty 
millions of years from the epoch when our Earth was first gathered, 
by Creative Power, into a sphere, (which period the great Canadian 
Geologist, Principal Dawson, of Montreal, considers a very moderate 
allowance of time) the crust of the earth became a genial soil> 
adorned with grass, and flowers, and fruits, and trees, and lit for 
the habitation of man ; and that the surface of the earth con- 
tained not only the Continents of Asia, Africa and Europe, and the 
great seas ; but also the continent of iNorth and South America; 
and that North America contained what was, in due time, the terri- 
tory of the United States, and the United States contained Virginia,, 
and Virginia contained the county ot Spotsylvania, and Spotsylva- 
nia, theotowu of Fredericksburg. Thus you perceive that we reach 
the beginning of our beloved old city by a much shorter and safer 
course than that run lay Diederick Ivniekerboeker — much shorter 
and safer than that of the man who, having undertaken to leap 
over a chasm fifty feet deep and fourteen feet wide, went back ii 



2 FREDERICKSBURG : PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE. 

mile and a half that he might gain a sufficient momentum, and 
who having run at full speed one mile and 875 yards, fell down ex- 
hausted just five yards from the chasm, over which he never got at 
all. 

But when we reach the beginning of Fredericksburg we cannot, 
with perfect accuracy, say that we have reached the land.. For, the 
very earliest accounts we have concerning the site of the present 
town confirm the impression made by the formation of the hills and 
flats on both sides of the Rappahannock at this point, that at least a 
part of the land now occupied by the town, was once covered by 
the water of the river. Captain John Smith, the hero of the set- 
tlement of Virginia, and a man whose career was worthy of the 
brightest days of knight-errantry, came up the Rappahannock in 
1608 (one year after the settlement of Jamestown) in an open boat 
of three tons burden, with a picked crew of twelve men, and ac- 
companied by an Indian named Mosco from one of the tribes on the 
Potomac. They found the Rappahannocs the most courageous and 
formidable savages they had yet encountered. As they sailed up, 
a shower of arrows would pour on them from the bushes on the 
shore, in which these Indians had ingeniously concealed themselves, 
and nothing but the willow targets obtained from the Massawomacs 
saved them from destruction. 

When they reached the falls, which were higher up the river than 
they now are, they landed and set up crosses and carved their names 
on the bark of trees in token of possession and subjugation. As 
they were rambling carelessly through the woods they were sud- 
denly attacked by about one hundred Indians who shot their arrows 
with great precision, and ran rapidly from tree tree to protect their 
bodies from the fatal fire of musketry. A running fight of half an 
hour was kept up, when the Indians mysteriously disappeared, leav- 
ing, however, one of their number so severely wounded in the 
knee by a musket-ball that he could not get off. Smith, with diffi- 
culty and not without threats, saved the life of this wounded savage 
from Mosco, who earnestly asked the privilege of dashing out his 
brains. 

The expanse of water just below the falls was then so wide that 
the boat of Captain Smith, when near the middle of the river, was 
beyond effective range either of the Indian arrows or of the En- 
glish muskets. Something like a lake must m fact then have cov- 
ered the Stafford flats and a part of those of the Spotsylvania side. 
.Yet we need not lie surprised at the change which has occurred in the 
272 years that have passed. Even the grandparents of the present 



FREDERICKSBURG : PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE. 6 

generation lived in a time when large barques and schooners heavily 
laden were able to ascend the river to Falmouth ; and there to dis- 
charge their cargoes and receive return cargoes of wheat and tobacco. 
And some of us are able, by our personal memories, to ascend to 
the times when the river was much wider and deeper than now. 
Therefore the feat attributed to George Washington, by a tradition 
much more reliable than that of the cherry-tree and the hatchet, 
that he threw a stone across the river at a point on the bank which 
skirted the Washington farm, was a greater triumph of muscular 
strength and dexterity than such a performance would now be. 

When Smith had his fight with the Rappahannocs, a few Indian 
wig-wams and lodges near the crest of the open hills, or on the 
wooded ridges were the only evidences of a town that the vicinity 
of Fredericksburg presented. But, as the Anglo-Saxon race grad- 
ually advanced in their settlements, and especially after the com- 
plete overthrow of the aged chief Opecancanough and his savage 
foes, in 1644 by Sir William Berkeley, the Indians began to retire 
from the rivers, and civilized settlers began to take their place. 
From this time, we have only, .dim and unreliable traditions con- 
cerning the rise of the town until the year 1727, one hundred and 
fifty three years ago. At this point we gain clear and definite 
light, proving that the town was not only in existence, but had risen 
to a respectable point in population and trade. In this year (17^7) 
old George the First died. He was, as you know, a native of Ger- 
many, and was Elector of Hanover, when he was elevated to the 
British throne in right of his mother, the Princess Sophia, of Meck- 
lenburg Strelitz, who was then the only Protestant lineal descen- 
dant of James the First. George the First was not fond of En- 
gland ; spent as little time there as possible ; spent most of his time 
near his native town of Osnaburg, in Hanover, where he at last 
died. He never could, to the day of his death, utter twelve consec- 
utive, intelligible English words. He hated his son George, Prince 
of Wales, and hated the noble and charming woman, Wilhelmina 
Dorathea Caroline, of Brandenburg, Princess of Wales, for no bet- 
ter reason than that everybody else loved her. He even went so 
far as to try to separate George* Prince of Wales, from his family 
and especially from his oldest son Frederic, from whom our old city 
of Fredericksburg has her name. This Frederic was born long be- 
fore .the death of his grandfather, old George the First, and as he 
grew to maturity, developed qualities which caused affection, if not 
esteem. He never became King himself, having died in the life- 
time of his father, but his son became George the Third, to whose 
mingled obstinacy and insanity we are indebted for American inde- 
pendence. 



4 FREDERICKSBURG : PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE, 

■ In the same year in which George the First died and George the 
Second became King, — that is in 1727 — Fredericksburg became a 
town by law and received its name by a solemn act of christening, 
performed by the Lieutenant-Governor, Council and Burgesses of 
the then existing Genera] Assembly. It was not, however, then 
incorporated as a town. It was not entitled to a Corporate Council 
or a Hustings Court, Having been previously a village or collection 
cf dwelling houses, inhabited by a variety of people, it was made a 
town, according to a policy of the Government of Virginia, which 
we now look back to with some surprise. You know well that the 
tendency of the social system in Virginia, at least up to the time of 
the late war, was to country life, and not to the growth of towns. 
On their great landed estates, with their abundant means, their 
slaves and dependants, the gentlemen of the Colony, and afterwards 
of the Commonwealth, looked upon towir life with something like 
aversion, and never sought the towns except for temporary business 
or pleasure. The General Assembly sought to antagonize this ten- 
dency. They sought to do a thing impossible — that is to make 
towns by statute-law. Towns cannot be made by statute-law any 
more than money can be made by statute-law. Towns and cities 
arise and swell and grow to greatness under laws which are not 
made by legislatures, but by the social and business wants of men. 
Hence we now read with amazement the numerous acts of assem- 
bly of the Colonial period by which nominal towns were established 
in nearly every county, and on nearly every river or considerable run: 
William Waller Hening, who has collected those acts, ridicules their 
policy and calls the designated spots by the appropriate name of 
" paper towns." They existed on paper and generally had no other 
existence. Thus one of them was declared in the statute to exist in 
the county of Stafford, on what was called Potomac neck, a spot 
where no town has ever existed in fact, and where the only dwell- 
ings have been the holes of muskrats and the lurking places of cat- 
fish, and the only inhabitants fish-hawks, snakes and mosquitoes. 

B.ut Fredericksburg was already a substantial town before the 
act of assembly gave it a name. It is interesting to note, however, 
that at that time, and for many years afterwards, rights of dedica- 
tion of private property to public purposes were claimed and exer- 
cised by the Colony Government, which would not be now held to 
be legitimate. The act in question vested in trustees for the town 
fifty acres of land lying along the South side of the river (Rappa- 
hannock), in the county of Spotsylvania, which land was part of a 
tract belonging to John Eoyston and Robert Buekner, of the county 
of Gloucester, ai\d the act directs that these fifty acres shall be sur- 
veyed and laid out in lots and streets, and shall be sold ; and that 



FREDERICKSBURG ; PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE. 5 

out of the jfroeeeds the trustees shall -pay John Royston and Robert 
Buckner for their land at the rate of forty shillings per acre. It 
does not appear that an}' process of valuation, or of condemnation 
had taken place, or that the consent of the owners had been ob- 
tained. And when we remember that the price to be paid was only 
about' eight dollars per acre, and that land outside of Fredericks- 
burg- has been sold, since the war, at more than eight times this rate 
per acre, this proceeding of the Gentlemen Burgesses seems to be 
tolerably arbitrary, and to be a dim foreshadowing of what is now 
known as forcible readjustment And it is worthy of remark that 
fifteen years afterwards this arbitrary proceeding is repeated. It ap- 
pears that George Home, the surveyor of Spotsylvania county, did, 
as required, survey the fifty acres and laid it out in streets and lots, 
and returned apian thereof to the trustees' who made sales according 
to the previous act ; but the original bounds not being accurately ob- 
served and the purchasers building very irregularly ,the trustees found 
it necessary to have another survey and plat in March, 1739, which 
was made by William Waller, surveyor of Spotsylvania county ; 
and by this new survey it appeared that the lots and buildings of 
the town had not only occupied the original fifty acres, but had also 
occupied two hundred and forty three square poles of land in the 
lower part end of the town belonging to Henry Willis, Gentleman, 
of the county of Spotsylvania, and two hundred and twenty square 
poles in the upper end of the town belonging to John Lewis, Gen- 
tleman, and formerly belonging to Mr. Francis Thornton. And as 
law suits and many controversies were threatened, the Lieutenant 
Governor, Council and Burgesses of the General Assembly passed 
an act in May, 1742, which was declared to be " for removing all 
doubts and controversies" and which declared that these lands be- 
longing to the estate of Elenrv Willis and to John Lewis, should be 
held and taken to be part of Fredericksburg, and vested in the 
trustees and purchasers claiming under them, provided that the 
trustees should pay to the executors of Henry Willis five pounds 
and to John Lewis fifteen pounds before the 25th of December. 
This act of the Colonial Government does not appear to have been 
made with the consent of the Willis family or of John Lewis, and 
it made a distinction between the supposed value of land in the up- 
per and the lower end of the town, which is to us, at this time, in- 
explicable. But its validity seems to have been tacitly admitted, as 
we find no protests or complaints, and it is to be presumed that these 
gentlemen, Royston, Buckner, Willis and Lewis, whose lands were 
thus unceremoniously dedicated to public uses, were willing (being 
owners of large tracts) to help forward the town and to sell the 
lands on which it stood at a price which, although apparently low 
imay have been a fair representative of values at that time. Thus, 



6 Fredericksburg: past, present and future. 



i 



the old town went forward in her course. Her area, as ascertained 
in 1739, was not quite fifty-three acres ; and when it is borne in 
mind that her present area, within her legal bounds, is about eight 
hundred acres, some proximate idea of her expansion within 130 
yea'rs may be obtained. 

In November, 1738, two fairs were provided for, to be held an- 
nually in Fredericksburg, on the first Tuesdays in June and Octo- 
ber, which times were changed in May, 1740, to the Wednesdays 
next after the court clays of the county, in June and October. These 
fairs continued, by law, two clays each, and were for the sale of all 
manner of cattle, victuals, provisions, goods, wares, and merchan- 
dise ; and on the fair days, and for two days before and two days 
afterwards, all persons coming to, attending or going from the fair 
with their cattle, goods, wares and merchandise were exempted from 
all arrests or executions, except for capital offences, breaches of the 
peace, or for controversies, suits and quarrels arising during the pro- 
gress of the fairs. And so beneficial both to town and county were 
these fairs found to be that the term of two years originally pro- 
vided, was continued by successive laws for a long period. 

The style of building frequently adopted in the town could not 
have been either safe or elegant. For, we find that in May, 1742, 
it was represented to the Assembly that the people were often in 
great and imminent danger of having their houses and effects burned 
by reason of the many wooden chimneys in the town, and, therefore, 
from that time it was made unlawful to build any wooden chimneys 
thereafter, and unlawful, after the expiration of three years, to use 
any wooden chimney already built; and in case the owners did not, 
within the three years, pull down and destroy these wooden chim- 
nies, the sheriff was authorized to do so. And by way of killing 
two hurtful birds with one stone, the same act made it unlawful for 
owners of swine to permit them to run or go at large in the town, 
and if any such animals were found running or going at large, any 
person was authorized to kill them ; but the slayer was not to con- 
vert the body of the animal to his own use, but to leave it where 
killed, and inform the owner ; and if no owner was known, then 
the nearest Justice of the Peace was authorized to order the body 
to the use of the poor, or persons he might select. Thus, early in 
Fredericksburg began the war on roving creatures, and I need not 
tell you through what "sad varieties of woe" to hogs, dogs and 
geese, it has at sundry times passed. 

Under these fostering influences the town grew in population, in 
prosperity and in the intelligence and public spirit of its inhabitants. 



'FREDERICKSBURG: PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE. i 

Its leading people were among the very first in Virginia to adopt 
the principle that the American Colonies ought not only to be ex- 
empt from taxation by the mother-country, but to be free and inde- 
pendent States. At a time when many of the ablest statesmen 
in Virginia, including such men as Richard Bland, Robert Carter 
Nicholas, Edmond Pendleton, George Mason, Thomas LudwellLee, 
Carter Braxton, and Benjamin Harrison were shrinking back from 
the very thought of attempting to achieve our independence, the 
people of Fredericksburg were far in advance of such statesmen in 
forecasting the future. c The evidence on this subject is conclusive, 
and is such as may well inspire every son and daughter of Fred- 
ericksburg with emotions of honest pride. 

On the 20th day of April, 1775, one day after the battle of Lex- 
ington, in Massachusetts, Lord Dunmore removed twenty barrels of 
gun-powder from the public magazine in Williamsburg, and soon 
afterwards fled with his wife and some of his domestics and took 
refuge in the English frigate Fowey, then lying at Yorktown. 
When the news of that battle and of the removal of the powder 
reached Fredericksburg, great excitement prevailed. Measures 
were speadily devised for collecting and arming the people. Six 
hundred men, well-armed and in tine discipline, assembled in Fred- 
ericksburg at the call of their officers. Many of them were from 
the counties of Spotsylvania and Caroline. After assembling, they 
dispatched Delegates to ascertain the condition of things at Wil- 
liamsburg. Those remaining in Fredericksburg held a public meet- 
ing, consisting of one hundred and two persons ■- citizens, soldiers 
and delegates to the Assembly; and on the 29th of April, 1775, 
that meeting adopted resolutions, which were in form and substance 
tantamount to a declaration of American independence. _ Though 
they deprecate civil war, yet, considering the liberties of America 
to be in danger, they pledged themselves to re-assemble at _ a mo- 
ment's warning and, by force of amis, to defend the rights of " this 
or any sister Colony" ; and they concluded with the sentence : 
" God save the liberties of America ! " These resolutions were 
passed twenty-one days before the celebrated Mecklenburg declara- 
tion in North Carolina, and one year and sixty-five clays before the 
Declaration of Independence of the American Congress. That 
thev indicated the presence of strange intellectual activity and fore- 
sight in the people of this town, revealed at a comparatively early 
period, I think it unreasonable to deny. And in the subsequent 
struggle of the revolution many of her citizens bore a heroic part, 
and one of her physiciaus, General Hugh Mercer, sealed with his 
blood at the battle of Princeton, his devotion to American inde- 
pendence. 



8 FREDERICKSBURG : PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE. 

Li 1782, one year before the close of the revolutionary war, 
Fredericksburg received a regular act of incorporation and was en- 
dowed with a a "onimon Council and a Hustings court. The M. S. 
Record of the latter, of date 15th of April, 1782, gives the first ac- 
tion of the court, which is not without interest. The Justices who 
held the first court were Charles Mortimer, William M. Wil- 
liams, James Someryille, Charles Dick, Samuel Roddy and John 
Julian. They were all regularly qualified and sworn in. John 
Legg was appointed Sergeant of the Corporation ; John Richards 
and James Jarvis, Constables ; John Hardy, Clerk of the Market 
and Inspector _pf flour. Five persons were authorized to keep 
taverns in the town, and it is worthy of note that these gentlemen 
were all men of respectability and excellent standing — some ot them 
bearing names which are still known among us, and are representa- 
tives of our most reputable families. The name "hotel" was not 
known then in Fredericksburg, They were all taverns. 

The next action of the court is significent as bearing testimony 
to the convivial habits already in full life in the town, and to which 
I shall have occasion farther to allude. A regular tariff of prices 
was established for alchoholic, fermented and vinous beverages. 
To save my hearers trouble, and to make values more intelligible, I 
shall not in this lecture, m general, use the original q notations in 
pounds, shillings and pence, but shall at once translate them into 
their equivalents in dollars and cents. The tariff confined the tav- 
ern-keepers to certain prices, which they were not to exceed ; and 
it is noteworthy that the limits are not given for a wine-glass full or 
even for a tumbler full, but for a gallon ! These prices are as fol- 
lows: f>rgood West India rum per pallon, S3. 84; for brandy, 
$1.67 (this, I think, could not have beeu Coguiac or even peach, 
and was probably apple brandy); for whiskey, $1.00 ; for strong 
beer, 67 cents; for rum toddy, $1.67; for brandy toddy, $i.25~; 
for rum punch, $2.50; for brandy punch, $2.00; for rum grog, 
$1.00; for brandy grog, 84 cents; for Madeira wine per bottle, 
$1.25; for port wine per bottle, 67 cents. This port could hardly 
have been the genuine article of Oporto, which was probably then 
becoming scarce, and which is now almost unknown, although it 
it has beeu happily substituted by the now far-famed port wine of 
California, Having thus limited the prices on drinking, the court 
next proceeds to limit the price for eating, and they fix the price of 
a single diet, as th*cy call it, at 25 cents — certainly a very moderate 
price according to our modern standards This tariff or beverages 
was somewhat altered by a new order entered on the 27th of June, 
1782; hut it remained substantially the same, and the law of the 
taverns for a number ot Years. 



FREDERICKSBURG : PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE. 9 

Nearly at the same time we find in the M. S records of the Will 
Books in the Hustings Court distinct evidence that the estates of 
to en, whether living or dead, were held to a subjection for their just 
debts, which, in these enlightened days, would be considered out of 
the question. In the record of the inventory and appraisement 
of the personalty of Jonathan Wilson, deceased, I find that the 
oath of the appraisers was taken August 31st, and the appraisement 
was returned to the court September 16th, 1782. This was while 
the war was not yet ended. In this appraisement I find recorded 
one silver watch, $26.67 ; one cow and yearling $16.67; one suit 
broadcloath clothes, $13.34; one other suit broadcloth, $6.67 ; three 
blue coats, $10; seven pair of white breeches, $11.67 ; five white 
vests, $11.67; one shirt, 67 cents; six pair of stockings, $1.67; 
two pair of shoes, $3.00 ; three hats, $3.00 ; one stock buckle, 50 
cents ; three brushes, 50 cents. And what is more important, it ap- 
pears by the .record that these ' articles were all sold and the nett 
proceeds applied to the payment of Jonathan Wilson's debts. So 
that this gentleman, who left behind him only on® shirt, but who left 
seven pair of white breeches and five white vests, for all of which 
he probably owed his dry goods, merchant and his tailor, had the 
satisfaction (in the invisible world) of knowing that all he left was 
applied to the payment of his just debts. Those were the good 
old days — clays of high living and of hard drinking it may be — ■ 
but days of honesty, when repudiation of just debts was a thing un- 
known. 

Thus Fredericksburg jogged on her way through many years, 
always merrily and often prosperously, during the period which in- 
tervened between the close of the revolutionary war and the estab- 
lishment of the early railroad lines in Virginia. Although one of 
these roads made our town its northern terminus for a series of years, 
and was never intended to injure her, yet it is undoubtedly true 
that this road with the extension of the Louisa road and its union 
with the Orange & Alexandria road, and the gradual advance of the 
Baltimore & Ohio railroad along the upper lines of the Shenandoah 
Valley, did injure the trade of Fredericksburg by diverting from 
her a large amount of produce — wheat, flour, tobacco, corn, bacon, 
and butter, which formerly found their way in wagons into the 
streets of the town. 

In accordance with the expressed wishes of a number ot gentle- 
men, it is deemed proper here to insert the historical narrative of 

FREDERICKSBURG IN THE WAR. 

No one who knew anything of the habits and character of the 



10 FREDERICKSBURG : UAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE. 

people of our town had anj T doubt as to the part they would take in 
the late civil war. They were, with few -and abnormal exceptions, 
thoroughly with the South. In the early movements in 1861, look- 
ing to a defence of the line of approach by the Potomac and Aquia 
creek, volunteers from the town were soon organized, and with* other 
forces under Brig.-General Daniel Buggies and Commanders Lynch, 
Minor and Thorburn, prepared batteries and made brave 'defence 
against the gun-boats which occasionally assaulted them. All the 
young men of suitable age and health soon left the town as volun- 
teers in the Thirtieth Virginia regiment under Colonel Bobert S. 
Chew, and the battery known through the war as the Fredericks- 
burg Artillery, long commanded by Colonel Carter Braxton. Only 
the older men, the women and the colored people were left in the 
town by the spring of 1862. 

For many of the subsequent scenes of the war, we have the rare ad- 
vantage of being able to refer, not merely to casual hearsay accounts, 
or even official reports,which rarely give anything more than a cokl 
skeleton, but, also, to the narratives of eye-witnesses, endowed 
with intelligence and feeling, who actually looked on and bore their 
part in these scenes. To the M. S. journal of a Fredericksburg lady 
I am under special obligations, and shall use it freely in continuing 
this historical sketch. 

On the 27th of April, 1862, the town first fell into the hands of 
the Federal Military forces. The M. S. account thus describes the 
event : 

" Fredericksburg is a captured town! The enemy took possession of the 
Stafford hills, which command the town, on Friday, the 18th, and their guns 
have frowned down upon us ever since. Fortunately for us, our troops were 
enabled to burn the bridges connecting our town with the Stafford shore, and 
thus saved us the presence of the Northern soldiers in our midst ; but our re- 
lief from this annoyance will not be long, as they have brought boats to the 
wharf, and will of course be enabled to cross at their pleasure. It is painfully 
humiliating to feel oneself a captive, but all sorrow for self is now lost in the 
deeper feeling of anxiety for our army ; for our cause ! We have lost every- 
thing; regained nothing ; our army has fallen back before the superior forces 
of the enemy, until but a small strip of our dear Old Dominion is left to us. 
Our sons are all in the field, and we, who are now in the hands of the enemy, 
cannot even h ear from them. Must their precious young lives be sacrificed!,, 
their homes made desolate, our cause be lo.st, and all our rights be trampled 
under the foot of a vindictive foe ? Gracious Gocl, avert from us these terri- 
ble-^ alamities ! Else in Thy Majesty and Strength and rebuke our 

"We Ilea] morning, from Bev. Mr. Tucki rmon from the 

, "The Lord God omnipotent reigneth;" and i ill ..... « . .. 

■ i the truth in its grandeur and ti n th.* v\ nk tg into 

. 3ncy, and : ; ... I . a lene*. . 



FKJEDERICESBUKU : PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE. . 1 L 

It is duo to the cause of truth to state that the United States 
military rule in Fredericksburg during the war was, with some 
noted exceptions, considerately and even kindly exercised. The 
provost command soon fell into the hands of General Patrick, who 
proved himself to be a man of genial benevolence and discrimina- 
tion, although he was firm and decided in his policy. Under his 
government the people of Fredericksburg were not oppressed, and 
many of her citizens conceived sincere respect for his character. 
Even the colored people were not encouraged to acts of insolence 
or insubordination. It is true that when they chose to use their 
newly acquired freedom and leave their former service they could 
do so ; but to their honor be it said, that many of them endured, 
with families they loved, ail the subsequent trying hardships of the 
war. 

Put after McClellan's gieat disaster in the seven days battles 
around Richmond, and after the Federal powers had placed at the 
head of their armies the empty, boasting and unscrupulous General 
Pope, who advanced through Fauquier and Culpeper with his 
" headquarters in the saddle," and his announced purpose to subsist 
his army by enforced supplies from his enemies, a great change for 
the worse took place, which was speedily felt in Fredericksburg and 
its neighborhood, The M. S. journal notes this change thus : 

"July 23. — The first news we heard this morning was that four of our citi- 
zens, Mr. Thomas B. Barton, Mr. Thomas F. Knox, Mr. Charles C. Wellford 
and Mr. Beverly T. Gill, had been arrested and sent North. We have no 
information why. The recent orders of Secretary Staunton and General Pope 
make it appear that we are not to be treated with the least leniency hereafter. 
Our Provost Marshal has been changed because he was ' too \kind to the 
rebels,' and they are now doing everything they can to persecute aud annoy us. 
All the stores in towmare closed to-day to prevent us from getting any sup- 
plies, and they have been sending their wagons around to everybody's farm in 
the neighborhood taking their hay and other products. I am afraid .my poor 
brother will have nothing left for his winter supply." 

But these annoyances did not long endure. The decisive over- 
throw given to the Federal army under General Pope, by General 
Lee, in the second battle of Manassas, was speedily followed by the 
advance of the Confederate armies into Maryland, the capture. of 
Harper's Ferry with eleven thousand prisoners and immense mili- 
tary supplies by General Stonewall Jackson, and the bloody but 
undecided struggle between Lee and McClellan on the borders of the 
Antietam. So far from being able to hold the line of the Rappa- 
hannock, the Federal authorities found that they needed every 
available soldier to prevent the loss of their own territory. Fred-. 



12 FREDERICKSBURG: PAST, PRESENT ANp FUTURE. 

ericksburg was evacuated by them on the 31st of August, 1862, 
The scenes are thus described by the M. S. journal : 

" September 1. — After writing tlie last entry in my journal yesterday, sev- 
.eral exciting events occurred. The rainjpoured down all the morning hut 
ceased about noon, and after dinner we went to church to hear Mr. Lacy. 
We found crowds at the corners of the streets, and some unusual excitement 
prevailing ; and we saw clouds of smoke rising from the encampments on the 
opposite side of the river. We went on to the Baptist church where we found 
a small audience ; we had a short sermon, and when we came out we walked 
dow^ several squares towards the bridges. Everything indicated an immediate 
departure ; the guards were drawn up in line ; the horses and wagons packed 
at headquarters'; cavalry officers rode up and down giving orders; company 
after company of pickets were led into town from the different roads and 
joined the regiment at the City Hall ; ambulances with the sick mo veil slowly 
through the streets ; and, as Ave stood watching, we saw the officer who acted 
as Provost Marshal of tiie town ride by with his adjutant, .and, in a few mo- 
ments, as we stood watching, the command was given to march, and away 
went infantry down one street and cavalry clown another to the bridge. It 
was very quietly done ; there was no music — no drum ; not a voice broke upon 
the air except tiie officers'. 'Forward march! ' It was certainly rather difficult 
to repress the exultation of the ladies as they stood in groups along the streets ; 
but strong leering was at work, and perhaps it was easier to repress any out- 
ward manifestations of it than if it had been slighter. I felt glad to be re- 
lieved of the presence of the enemy, and to be treed from the restraints of 
their power ; glad to be /once more within Southern lines, and to be brought 
into communication Avith our oavii dear people. But the' great gladness was 
that the evacuation of Fredericksburg showed that they had been defeated up 
the country and could no longer hold the line of the Rappahannock. And 
this gave us strong hope that A r irginia might yet be free from the armies of the 
intruder. We had scarcely reached home when a thundering sound shook the 
house, and we knew it Avas the bloAving up of the bridges. Several explosions 
followed, and soon the bright flames leaped along the sides and floors of the 
bridges and illuminated the Avhole scene within the bounds of the horizon ; 
the burning continued all night, and our slumbers Avere disturbed by frequent 
explosions of gunpowder placed under the two bridges. R * * * Avent out 
Avith his gun and joined the guard which it Avas deemed proper to organize for 
the protection of the toAvn against any stragglers or unruly persons who might 
chance to be proAvling about. The first thing I hearc| this morning was that 
my two servants, Martha and Susan, had returned, and requested permission 
to engage in then usual work." 

" Sept. 2.— About two "hundred people came into town to-day from the 
surrounding country, and general congratulations ensued. Some of our cav- 
alry rode into town this evening and were received with shouts of joy ; the 
laches lined the streets waving 'then handkerchiefs and loudly uttering their 
welcome." 

'•Sept. 4.— Sent my portion of the soldiers' breakfast to Hazel run by J * * * 
and S * * *, who came back with a great account of the way the soldiers were 
feasted on hot rolls, heels Leak and' coffee, and their enjoyment of the good 
things after so long an abstinence. 

"• We attended yesterday evening the funeral of our old and beloved citizen, 
Doctor John B. Ball. While s anding around the -grave, the sound of the 
bugle and the tram 1 ) of cavalry horses' fell unon our ears, and very soon, a 



FREDERICKSBURG : PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE. 18 

troop of seven hundred horsemen appeared ; they were our own ' greys.' We 
could have told it by their gallant bearing if it had not been revealed by their 
dress. The air was' rent witli shouts. As Ave came home the streets were 
idled with excited people, and everybody's face was lighted up with a glad 
smile.'' 

From the presence and dominion of Federal troops, Fredericks- 
burg was thus for a time relieved. But the season of comparative 
quiet thus enjoyed did not long continue. Again the horrors of 
war closed over her iu their most apalling form. 

In November, 1S62, the army under General Lee was confronting 
the " Army of the Potomac " under General Ambrose Burnside, 
who had taken command upon the removal of McClellan. Know- 
ing that a movement upon Richmond was intended, the Confederate 
commander keenly watched his adversary, to determine what line of 
approach he would adopt. It was soon apparent. On the 10th of 
November a small body of Federal cavalry, under Capt. Ulrica 
Dahlgren (a son of the admiral commanding the fleet ot South Car- 
olina), dashed into the streets of Fredericksburg. A -few Southern 
horsemen were there, who, although at first dispersed, quickly ral- 
lied, and aided by some adventurous citizens, attacked the raiders. 
Their object being merely a reconnoissance, they soon withdrew, with 
the loss of a few men and horses. Immediately afterwards the 
Federal army began to move down from Fauquier and Prince Wil- 
liam, through Stafford county, to occupy Fredericksburg. General 
Lee gave prompt warning to Col. Win. A. Ball, who with a small 
cavalry force held the. town, directing him, if possible, to retard the 
enemy, and informing him that he would soon be 1 reinforced. The 
divisions of McLaws and Ransom, with W. II. F. Lee's brigade of 
cavalry and Lane's Battery, were put iu rapid motion for the threat- 
ened point, and the whole Confederate army prepared to follow. 

Col. Ball had already proved his courage and skill upon the field 
of Leesburg and in other encounters; he now gave a signal exam- 
ple of what may be clone with a small force by a resolute front,, 
On Sunday, the 16th, his scouts announced the approach of the 
enemy on three roads — the Warren ton, Stafford Court-house, and 
Poplar. lie telegraphed to Gen. Gustavus W. Smith in Richmond, 
that if he would send him two companies of infantry he would en- 
gage the enemy if they sought to cross the fords of the Rappahan- 
nock near Fredericksburg. Gen Smith promptly sent him a battal- 
ion of four companies, under Major Finney, from the 42d Mississip- 
pi. Col. Ball placed these in the mill-race and mill opposite Fal- 
mouth, stationed his cavalry iu the upper [tart of Fredericksburg, 



14: FREDERICKSBURG : PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE. 

and planted Capt. Lewis's battery of four gilns and eighty men on 
the plateau around the residence of Mrs. Fitzgerald, half a mile 
above the town. His whole force did not exceed five hundred and 
twenty men. 

At 10 o'eolck on Monday, the 17th, the Southern scouts w T ore 
driven across the river by the enemy's cavalry, and in four hours 
thereafter the whole Federal corps under Gen. Sumner, twelve thou- 
sand strong, appeared on the Stafford Heights ' opposite Fredericks- 
burg, and planted their field-batteries, consisting of more than 
twenty guns. In the face of their rapid and accurate firing Lewis's 
men stoutly maintained their ground and replied. The distance did 
not exceed eight hundred yards. Finding the exposure too great, 
Col. Ball withdrew the pieces and artillerists under the shelter of 
Mrs. Fitzgerald's house, which was pierced through and thorugh by 
the enemy's shot ; yet the Southern fire was maintained, and the 
Federals, uncertain as to the force before them, made no attempt to 
cross the river. 

It seemed rash to remain, and all of Col. Ball's officers, except 
Adjt. Dickinson, earnestly advised him. to withdraw. But he re- 
fused, and telegraphed to Gen. Smith that he would hold his posi- 
tion while a man was left to him. Gen. Smith replied: "Give 
them the best fight you have in you"; and General Lee tele- 
graphed : " Hold your position if you can : reinforcements are hur- 
rying to you." Til us encouraged, Col. Ball maintained his front 
with five hundred men in the face of the twelve thousand. 

On Tuesday the enemy's force was largely increased : Burnside's 
whole army was pouring down to the Stafford hills. Col. Ball re- 
ceived a reinforcement of the Norfolk Light Artillery and the 61st 
Virginia Regiment, amounting together to about five hundred men. 
He relieved the wearied infantry at the mill and the artillerists at 
Mrs. Fitzgerald's, and still faced the enemy. They were waiting 
for pontoon bridges and did not cross. 

Meanwhile Gen. Lee's army was rushing down the roads from 
Culpeper and Orange to occupy the crest of hills around Fredericks- 
burg. Wednesday, at daybreak, Fftzhugh Lee's cavalry arrived ; 
the next morning Gen: MeLaws, with his own division and that of 
Gen. Ransom, w ere in position, and on the 20th the Commander-in- 
Chief was at hand to direct the movements of the corps of Long- 
street and Jackson, which rapidly followed him. 

On Thursday, the 20th of November, by request of General Lee, 



.FREDERICKSBURG: PAST, PRESENT AND. FUTUPE. 1:5 

Montgomery Slaughter,-" Mayor of Fredericksburg, accompanied 
by the Recorder, "VVm. A Little, and by Douglas II. Gordon, a mem- 
ber of her Council, held an interview with the Confederate Com- 
mander-in-Chief. It was held during a driving rain at Sriowden, 
the residence of John L. Stansbury, about a mile from town. The 
Mayor and his companions asked the aid and advice of Gen. Lee 
in the terrible crisis now at hand. He was grave and serious, but, 
as always, kind and considerate. lie did not conceal the dangers 
threatening the town from the collision of two great armies. At 
the close of the interview Mayor Slaughter said: " Then, General 
Lee, I understand the people of the town must fear the worst." 
He replied: " Yes, they must tear the worst." With these tin al 
words, the town authorities were turning sadly away, when General 
Longstreet, who had been sitting in the conference wrapped in his 
military great coat streaming with rain, rose from his seat and in 
a deep tone said, " But letthem hope for the best." A single gleam 
of suuhsine fell on the delegates, and they returned to the town. 

On Friday, the 21st, Gen. Sumner of the Federal army sent over 
a flag of truce with a written message to the Mayor and. Common 
' Council of Fredericksburg. General Patrick bore the missive, and 
landed near the rock b<dow the deep part of the river known as 
" French John's " Here he was met by Col. Ball, the Confed- 
erate officer before mentioned, and they entered a log house which 
had been built on the spot, by order of General Patrick, when 
formerly in command of the town. General Sumner's letter (the 
original of which I have examined) was as follows : 

Headquarters Right Grand Division Aemy op the Potomac, 
Camp near Falmouth, Va., Nov. 21, 1862. 

To the Mayor and Common Council of Fredericksburg, Va. : 

Gentlemen, — Under cover of the houses of your 1 city, shots have been fired 
.upon the troops of my command. Your mills and manufactories are furnish- 
ing provisions and the material for clothing for armed bodies in rebellion against 
the Government of the United States. Your railroads and other means of 
transportation are removing supplies to the depots of such troops. This con- 
dition of tilings must terminate ; and by direction of Maj. -General Burnside, 
commanding this army, I accordingly demand the surrender of 'the city into 
my hands, as the representative of the Government of the United States, at 
or before five o'clock this afternoon (5 o'clock P. M. to-day). Failing an 
affirmative reply to this demand by the time indicated, sixteen (16 hours )4iour"s 
will be permitted to elapse for the rmeoval from the city of women .and chil- 
dren, the sick, wounded and aged ; which period having elapsed, I shall pro- 
ceed to shell the town. 

Upon obtaining possession of the' town every necessary means will lie taken 



IB FREDERICKSBURG : PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE. 

to preserve order, and secure the protective operation of the laws and policy 
of the United States Government. 

I am, very Besp'y your ob't Servant, E. V. Sumner, 

Bvt. Major-General U. S. Army, comm'g^ 

Col. Ball simply stated that before delivering the letter to the 
civil authorities it must be referred to his commanding military 
officer. But neither he nor the Mayor gave any intimation of the 
actual presence of General Lee, with a large part of his army on 
the ridge in rear of the town. The printed statements heretofore 
published on that point are all erroneous. General Patrick was 
obliged to remain in the log house from 10 A. M. to 7 P. M. on 
the 21st. Meanwhile Col. Hall, through the proper channels, for- 
warded the letter to General Lee. At twenty minutes before 5 P. 
M. the letter was received at his office by Mayor Slaughter, 
through Gen. J. E. B. Stuart, who communicated, in full, General 
Lee's decision. With the aid of his advisers, the Mayor prepared 
a written reply bearing date " Mayor's Office, Fredericksburg, 
Nov, 21st, 1862." This reply was to the effect that the communi- 
cation of Gen. Sumner had not reached the Mayor in time to fur- 
nish a reply by 5 o'clock P. M., as requested; that it had been 
sent to him after passing (by General Patrick's consent) through 
the hands of the Commanding officer of the Confederate States 
forces near the town ; that as to the shots complained of in the 
northern suburbs, they were the acts of the Confederate military 
force holding the town; that the Mayor was authorized to say 
that the several subjects of complaint would not recur ; but that 
the Confederate troops would not occupy the town, neither would 
they permit the Federal troops to do so. Mayor Slaughter, at- 
tended by Doctor William S. Scott and Samuel S. Howison, went 
to the log house and, at about 7 P. M., delivered this reply to 
General Patrick, who had been long expecting it with some im- 
patience, and who indulged in some good humored remonstrances 
at the delay. His military attendants under the flag of truce 
having all returned to the Federal lines, he was rowed back in a 
canoo across the river by Doctor Scott and Mr. Howison, under a 
pledge for his safety by the Mayor. 

In view of the bombardment menaced, and of the certainty that 
their homes would soon be under the tire of both armies, General 
Lee advised the inhabitants to remove as rapidly as possible. 

The threatened bombardment was not opened the next morning, 
but it became apparent that the enemy would cross, and the town 
Would be exposed not only to their tire, but to the most terrible 



Fredericksburg: past, present and future. 17 

desolations of war. The humane and considerate chief of the Con- 
federate army urged the women and children to remove, and fur- 
nished wagons, ambulances, every facility in his* power for their aid. 
Then followed a scene illustrating both the horrors of war and the 
virtues to which it sometimes gives birth. The people of Fred- 
ericksburg almost en masse lett their homes rather than yield them 
to the enemy. Trains of cars departed full of refugees. Upon the 
last train the enemy opened a fire of shells ; they afterwards ex- 
plained that it was a mistake. Wagons and vehicles of every kind 
left the town filled with women and little children, with the few ar- 
ticles of apparel and necessity that could be removed. Many were 
seen on foot along the roads leading into the country. Winter had 
commenced; snow had fallen. Many were compelled to take 
refuge in cabins, barns and tents scattered through the woods and 
fields. They were dependent for food on the exertions of their 
friends and the humaue efforts of the Southern army. 

Fredericksburg was an old Virginia town, long distinguished for 
the refinement and intelligence of its people and the beauty of its 
women. The sight of such a population driven out from their 
homes in the winter excited the sympathy and admiration of the 
South. General Lee's testimony was :"" History presents no in- 
stance of a people exhibiting a purer or more unselfish patriotism, 
or a higher spirit of fortitude and courage, than was evinced by the 
people of Fredericksburg. They cheerfully incurred great hard- 
ships and privations, and surrendered their homes and property to 
destruction, rather than yield them into the hands of the enemies 
of their country." A movement to aid them was commenced in 
Richmond. A committee of relief and treasurer were appointed. 
Funds were liberally contributed throughout the whole South. The 
army vied with the people in furnishing money for the distressed 
refugees. From the Commander-in-Chief down to the humblest 
private in the ranks, the brave men who had fought the battles 
now devoted their hard-earned money to the cause of humanity. 
The division of Gen. Hood gave more than $9,000 ; the cavalry 
under Gen. Stuart gave nearly $8,000, of which $5,400 were con- 
tributed by the brigade of Fitzhugh Lee ; the 13th Mississippi Regi- 
ment gave $1,600; the small naval force at Drury's Bluff gave 
nearly $800, and other bodies contributed in like proportion. The 
contributions of people and army continued until more than ninety 
thousand dollars had been received and disbursed by the committee 
in Richmond, and nearly an equal sum by the Mayor of Fred- 
ericksburg. The relief given by the purchase and supply of food 
and clothing was most seasonable. Yet it could not compensate for 
broken hearts and desolated homes. 



IS FREDERICKSBURG : PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE. 

A few families remained in Fredericksburg, determined to brave 
the terrors of war as long as possible. The hills of Stafford are 
higher than the corresponding crest on the south side of the river. 
The enemy had planted six batteries of heavy guns, consisting of 
20-pound Parrots, and siege-pieces throwing 85-pound shells, on the 
hills from Falmouth to Deep run, in distance from Fredericks- 
burg varying from six hundred to two thousand yards, and 
these, with their numerous field-batteries, commanded not only 
the town, but the river for four miles up and down the line of 
hills. Perceiving that he could not prevent them from crossing 
under the fire of their guns, General Lee determined to meet 
them as they advanced over the plateau between the river and 
the ridge of hills south and west of Fredericksburg. For this pur- 
pose he occupied the crest with his army, and erected heavy bat- 
teries at the most eligible positions. His line ran from the river, 
v, mile and a half above the town, to the railroad crossing at Ham- 
ilton's, four miles below. Longstreet's corps rested its left wing on 
the river ; next was A. P. Hill's division ; and Jackson's corps was 
at Hamilton's, with D. H. Hill, observing the enemy at Port Eoyal. 
Gen. Hampton's cavalry guarding the upper Rappahannock, crossed, 
and on the 28th of November made a sudden descent upon the Fed- 
eral horse at Dumfries, capturing two squadrons and a number of 
wagons with stores. At the same time some of Colonel Beale's 
cavalry crossed in boats below Port Royal and captured several 
prisoners. Excited by these bold movements the enemy's gunboats 
moved up and threw shells into Port Royal, but were driven off 
with damage on the 5th of December by the. accurate fire of Major 
Pelham's artillery. 

These skirmishes were soon followed by the grand movement 
of the enemy. Having at length received his pontoon-bridges, 
General Burnside prepared to throw his army across the river. At 
two o'clock in the morning of Thursday, the 11th of December, his 
troops were in motion, and three signal-guns in General Lee's works 
sounded a note of warning to the people and the army. The ene- 
my coriimenced throwing three pontoon-bridges across the river, 
two at Fredericksburg and one at Deep run, a mile and a quarter 
below. 

The brigade of General Barksdale held the town. The 17th 
Mississippi, aided by the 8th Florida, guarded the upper crossing ; 
the 18th was near Deep run. As the enemy appeared on their un- 
finished bridge opposite the town, General Barksdale's men opened 
a severe musketry fire, picking them off with great rapidity. 
Hardly had this fire commenced before the enemy's heavy batter- 



FREDERICKSBURG : PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE. 19 

ries opened the long-threatened bombardment of Fredericksburg. 
Their field batteries soon followed, and for twelve hours a horrible 
deluge of shells and shot was poured upon the streets and houses. 
The few remaining inhabitants fled to their cellars, and sought to 
save their lives from the storm which was beating their homes to 
pieces. Many houses were burned ; among them was the residence 
of the postmaster, Reuben T. Thorn. He was old and enfeebled by 
illness, yet he retained his courage, and when his house was burn- 
ing he took his seat in a chair in his yard, seeming to defy the tor- 
rents of deadly missiles. His friends with difficulty removed him 
from his ruined home. 

The scenes of terror and danger passing in the town were pic- 
tured in a letter from a lady to her son in the army. She had re- 
mained until the bombardment. She wrote : 

" Our lives are all spared, and you must help us to adore the 
goodness which has intervened between us and the great perils to 
which we have been exposed. We had no warning of the inten- 
tion of the enemy, and were awakened on the morning of the 11th, 
at five o'clock, by the booming of the cannon, and heard instantly 
that the enemy were crossing the river. We hurried on our clothes 
and rushed into the cellar as the second shot struck the house The 
servants made up a fire, and we had just gathered around it when 
the crashing of glass and splintering of wood caused us to run to- 
wards the door leading to the wood-cellar. As we reached it, poor 
little S. exclaimed, 'I am struck, Ma !' and fell into my arms. We 
bore him into a closet in the cellar and tore his clothes off, and found 
only a large black bruise on his right arm near the shoulder ; the 
ball which struck him was so nearly spent that it had only force left 
to inflict this hurt. We afterwards found the ball near where he 
stood— a twelve-pounder. After this we did not venture even into 
that room again, but sat crouched together in the dark hole for thir- 
teen hours, while the cannonading was tearing everything to pieces 
above our heads. There are holes in the upstairs rooms large enough 
to put a barrel through. About one o'clock Brother J. came in from 
his farm, at the risk of his life, to see if we could be moved. A 
hasty council was held, but the firing was so tremendous and the de- 
struction in the streets so great that it was thought best for us to re- 
main where we were. So there we sat upon the floor in the closet, 
•'looking upward in the strife.' Susan and Martha got us a furnace of 
live coals, and even cooked us a little food at the fire-place in one of 
the rooms ; they got' us all the counterpanes and blankets they could 
hastily snatch, and made poor -T. a bed, as he has never recover- 
ed from his late attack. 



20 FREDERICKSBURG: PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE. 

" Just at dark we heard your uncle's voice again calling, ' Come 
out. I have an ambulance at the back door, and you must not stay 
to get a single thing. They are in town, only a square off, and you 
must be gone at once ! ' We needed no second call, but wrapping 
the blankets around us, we rushed through the yard over the 
branches of trees. The pailings were all down and the yard was 
ploughed up, and we stepped over many a ball and fragment of 
shell in our hasty progress to the ambulance. Brother J. put u? all 
in and remained a few moments to lock up. the house, when our 
driver put the whip to his horses, and we tore through the town at 
a rate that at any other time would have frightened me for the s afety 
of our lives, but now seemed all too slow for our anxiety to be be- 
yond the reach of those fearful shot and shell which were still 
crashing through the streets and tearing the houses to pieces. I 
never ventured to look back until we reached the top of the high 
hill beyond the mill, and then the scene was so awfully grand and 
terrible that I cannot venture upon its description. The railroad- 
bridge across Hazel run was burning, and large fires at several 
points in the town. There were hundreds of camp-fires, around 
which bands of men under arms were gathered, and the road was 
lined with soldiers, wagons, and ambulances. Every object could 
be distinguished, even the fierce swarthy countenances of our sol- 
diers, every one of whom looked defiance towards the foe who had 
caused the destruction of our homes. 

" We came on at rather a lessened pace, and when Mrs. Temple 
met us in the yard with her warm, cordial welcome, and led us into 
the bright cheerful-looking room, where a good fire was blazing, and 
kind, sympathizing friends were all around, my wrought-up agony 
gave way in floods of tears which could not be controlled. We 
thanked God for our deliverance ; and when we lay down in com- 
fortable beds, far away from the sound, the sight and the smell of 
battle (for the atmosphere which we had breathed all day, was so 
impregnated with gunpowder* that it was oppressive), we felt indeed 
that after all we were dealt with by a kind Father." 

General Barksdale's troops resisted the passage of the enemy with 
stubborn, courage. Nine times they attempted to complete their 
pontoons opposite to the town, and as often were driven back by the 
fatal fire from the rifle-pits and houses on the bank. But at the 
bridge near Deep run the Confederates were exposed to a sweeping 
fire of artillery, and at one o'clock they were compelled to withdraw. 
This enabled the enemy to cross below and advance on the town. 
Under orders General Barksdale's men slowly retired, fighting all 
the wav throusrh the streets and inflicting loss on the foe. 



FREDERICKSBURG: PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE. 21 

On gaining possession of Fredericksburg, the Federal troops 
abandoned themselves to pillage and destruction. They entered 
the stores and dwellings, rifled them of all that could be removed, 
and wantonly shattered to pieces furniture, mirrors and glassware, 
ripped open beds and beat out their contents into the yards and 
streets. All the liquor and wine found was speedily seized. Four 
hundred bottles of old wine were taken from the store of Wm. Al- 
len by Meagher's Irish bragade. Its effects were seen in the battle 
now hastening on. 

On Friday, the 12th, the Federal army was drawn up in battle- 
liue, preparing to advance. Not less than sixty thousand men were 
on the south bank of the river, embracing the four corps of Sumner, 
Couch, Franklin and Wilcox, with more than a hundred pieces of 
artillery. The Confederate army sternly confronted them in a line 
extending nearly six miles. Longstreet occupied the wooded ridge 
running from the river above to a point a mile below the town. 
A. P. Hill's troops were on his right, and Jackson held the lower 
line from above Hamilton's Crossing to the Massaponax river. The 
Southern batteries occupied fine positions to sweep the semicircular 
plateau across which the enemy must advance. Stuart's horse ar- 
tillery were in the plain on the extrem e right, and the Fredericks- 
burg Battery under Braxton, and Letcher Artillery under Greenlee 
Davidson, were in Bernard's field, very near the centre of the Fed- 
eral line. At one o'clock the heavy batteries on each side opened, 
and for an hour kept up a brilliant duel of shells and round shot. 
Then all was silent again. 

On the morning of Saturday, the 13th of December, a dense fog 
hung over the river and the adjoining fields. Under its cover the 
Federals advanced. Their heaviest attack was against the position 
held by A. P. Hill. Through the thick vapor their dark masses 
were dimly seen, and immediately the batteries of Braxton and 
Davidson opened on them with severe effect. At the same time 
Major Pelham on the right began an enfilading fire, which ploughed 
through their ranks, sweeping down numbers at every discharge. 
His fire was so effective that six of the enemy's batteries concen- 
trated on him ; yet under this sharp ordeal he maintained his posi- 
tion, and continued his rounds with such daring as to excite the ad- 
miration of the Southern commander. 

The divisions of the Federal Generals Meade, Gibbons, and 
Doubleday of Franklin's corps, made strenous efforts to penetrate 
General Hill's lines. As their left advanced towards the ridge oc- 
cupied by Colonel Lindsay Walker's artillery, he waited until they 



22 FREDERICKSBURG;. PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE. 

were within eight hundred yards. Then the guns under Pegram, 
Ellett and Mcintosh launched on them a storm of missiles, which 
first stopped their advance and then drove them back in rout and 
confusion. Meanwhile, farther up the line the attack was more suc- 
cessful ; the brigades of Gen. Archer and Lane became engaged 
with a heavy force of the enemy. A bloody struggle ensued. Bar- 
ber's 37th and Avery's' 33d North Carolina kept up a destructive 
fire. The Confederates repulsed all in their front, but the numbers 
of the enemy enabled them to press in upon their flanks ; and find- 
ing that they were in danger of being surrounded, two regiments of 
Archer and Lane's men gave way and fell back, leaving about two 
hundred and forty prisoners in the hands of the enemy. 

General Archer, with two regiments and two battalions from 
Tennessee, Alabama and Virginia, held his ground with tenacity, 
while reinforcements from right and left were hurrying to him. 
Two of Hood's regiments under General Law, Godwin's 57th and 
McDowell's 54th North Carolina, were detached from the left, and 
made a charge which drove back the Federals in their front beyond 
the Bowling- Green road. But a massed column of the enemy 
poured through the breach in the Southern lines, and penetrated to 
A. P. Hill's second line, where they encountered General Maxcy 
Gregg's brigade. Orr's Rifles mistaking the advancing Federals for 
friends, were thrown into momentary confusion. In his efforts to 
rally them, General Gregg fell mortally wounded on the field. A 
braver soldier and a truer heart was never lost to the South. Colo- 
nel Hamilton, who succeeded to the command, rallied his men, and 
with promptness re-formed his lines and poured a killing volley into 
the enemy's flank. At the same time General Thomas' brigade 
came up to the assistance of Archer, and Lawton's and Hoke's bri- 
gades from Early's division hastened into the melee, with the yells 
which differed so much from the huzzas of the Federals that the 
onset of a Southern regiment was always known by the sound. 
After a short and sanguinary contest the Federals under Ferrero, 
Negley and Sturgis, gave way, and were driven across the railroad 
with heavy loss. Latimer's battery and the brigade under Colonel 
Brockenbrough completed the rout. Doubleday's advance with the 
extreme left of the Federals was successfully met by Jackson's in- 
fantry under D. H. Hill, aided by the batteries of Brockenbrough, 
Raine, Poague and Dance. The Pennsylvania Reserves under Gen- 
eral Jackson were received with a fire so fatal that they broke in con- 
fusion and could not be rallied. Jackson fell dead on the field, and 
his body, with that of his adjutant, Sweringer, fell into the hands of 
the Confederates. General Gibbons was wounded. The attack on 
the Southern right had failed. After eight hours of fierce contest 



FREDERICKSBURG : PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE. 23 

they had driven hack the .enemy at every point, leaving the inter- 
vening ground covered with his slain. 

Meanwhile on the left a bloody scene had been enacted. The 
Washington Artillery were in position on Marye's Hill. General 
Ransom's division was in support. Brigadier-General Thomas R. 
R. Cobb's brigade was posted on the road below the hill, behind a 
stone-wall which afforded an admirable breastwork. Brig.-General 
Cooke's men occupied the crest of the hill. At half-past eleven 
o'clock the serried ranks of the divisions of Generals Hancock, 
Couch and Wilcox poured out from h redcricksburg, and advanced 
over the narrow fields. When they came within effective range, 
Walton's guns opened on them, tearing their ranks with spherical 
case and canister. Still they came steadily on, while the heavy bat- 
teries from the opposite hills and a cloud of sharpshooters on their 
flanks sought to create a diversion in their favor. But when they 
reached a distance of a hundred yards from the road, the infantry 
under Cobb and Cooke opened their fire and sent a rain of bullets 
upon their already bleeding ranks. Their dead fell like withered 
leaves. Unable to bear the storm, they recoiled and fled. Again 
they were rallied and came on, seeking shelter of ravines and 
fences ; again they met the hail of lead and retreated in rout, leav- 
ing hundreds of dead and wounded. Five times their advance 
was renewed, and as often repelled with fearful loss. 

As the evening approached the Federal officers organized a column 
of assault heavier than any they had yet employed. The troops 
under Couch, Wilcox and Burnside were massed for a final and 
desperate effort. Meagher's Irish Brigade led the van ; their na- 
tive courage had been stimulated to the highest degree by the liquor 
and wine they had seized in Fredericksburg. Seeing the formida- 
ble movement, General Ransom ordered Cooke's brigade to support 
Cobb's on the road. Kershaw ordered up his division, and Kem- 
per hastened into line with his troops. At four o'clock the enor- 
mous columns of the enemy were hurled upon the position, firing 
such torrents of bullets that a dark belt stained with lead ran along 
the whole line of the stonewall. The confederates suffered severe 
loss. General Colib, a most gallant and accomplished officer was 
killed by a fragment of shell. General Cooke was dangerously 
wounded. Yet the men stood firm, and when the foe came within 
short musket-range, they met them with a ceaseless fire of minie- 
balls, while the artillery above under Colonel Alexander was shat- 
tering their ranks with grape and canister. In the words of a Nor- 
thern writer, " human nature was unable to hold out against the 
terrible lire." The Irish Brigade melted away ; the ground was so 



$4 FREDERICKSBURU : PAST, PRESENT ANh FUTURE. 

covered with the dead that the men behind were compelled to pass 
over or push them aside. Tlie Federals broke and retreated in hor- 
ror from the held of blood. Their sharp-shooters kept up a scat- 
tering fire, but as the shades of evening gathered over the held, the 
remnants of the immense host that had moved out in the morning 
retreated into town or behind the banks of the river. The Southern 
victory was complete. 

The loss of the Confederates in this battle was four thousand two 
hundred men, of whom only four hundred and fifty-eight were killed. 
A. P. Hill's division, which sustained the heaviest pressure, lost two 
hundred and eleven killed, and fourteen hundred and eighty 
wounded. Besides Geuerals Gregg and Cobb, the Southern army 
lost other valuable officers, among whom were Captain H. D. King 
and Lieut. James Ellett. 

The repulse of the enemy had been complete, and accomplished 
with so little comparative loss, that the Confederate generals ex- 
pected the battle to be renewed on Monday. But the result proved 
that they did not know the extent of the bloody chastisement they 
had inflicted. The Federal loss in killed, wounded and prisoners 
was not less than fifteen thousand men. They lost nine thousand 
small arms. Their spirits were broken by the fearful slaughter they 
had sustained. Their dead lay in ghastly heaps on the field ; nearly 
every house in the town was filled with their wounded. 

During the whole battle General Burnside never crossed to the 
south side of the Eappahannock. He remained in the house of A. 
K. Phillips, on a high hill north of the river. A Northern observer 
said : " His position most of the time was on the upper balcony, 
where with a powerful glass he w T as watching the movements." Af- 
ter the sanguinary defeat of his army he crossed and attempted to 
organize another attack in columns of regiments ; but his troops de- 
murred, his division generals advised against it. In truth, the men 
could not have been brought to the attempt, and he quickly aban- 
doned it. 

On the night of Monday, December 15th, in the midst of a storm 
of wind and rain, he withdrew his beaten army with all possible 
silence and celerity across the river and then removed the pontoons. 
The next morning when the Southern officers and their men looked 
through the haze and storm to see what their enemy was doing, he 
was gone. 

During the bloody battles fought in 1864 between the immense 



iFKEDERXCKSB'tTRG : PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE. 2S 

.Federal forces under General Ulysses Grant and the comparatively 
small, but indomitable Confederate army under General Robert E, 
Lee, and which have made the names of Mine Rim, the Wilder- 
ness and Spotsylvania Court House forever memorable in history, 
. the many thousands of wounded of the Federal army were sent in 
ambulances and wagons to Fredericksburg, where a host of United 
JStates surgeons and assistants attended them. The native popu- 
lation then remaining was small, and consisted entirely of women 
•children and elderly men ; even the colored population had become 
very much reduced. 

On Sunday, the 8th of May, while a small congregation was at- 
tending upon religious services in the basement of the Southern 
Methodist Church a boy came hastily in and whispered to Mr. Jo- 
seph W. Sener, who announced that a body of armed Federal troops 
were marching down the Poplar Spring road. The people quickly 
dispersed to their houses. These troops did not exceed sixty in 
number, and were all slightly wounded ; but as they were armed, the 
men of the town deemed it safest to require their surrender as 
prisoners of war, which was promptly made. Soon, other wounded 
stragglers followed until the number of prisoners amounted to 
about two hundred. They were sent to Richmond under a small 
escort. 

Within the next twenty four hours, the fifteen thousand of the 
wounded of General Grant's army were brought into the town in 
.ambulances, wagons and all available conveyances. They w r ere at- 
tended by a large body of surgeons and assistants of every kind. 
Private houses and yards were occupied, and ghastly sights every- 
where met the eye. The sudden increase of the population from 
three or four thousand to twenty thousand was enough in itself to 
cause suffering and distress, and these were greatly aggravated by 
the scanty supply of water. This was caused by the fact that the 
Federal wounded in passing by the Reservoir on Poplar Spring Hill 
drank it almost dry, and threw into it the dead body of a colored 
soldier. This so tainted the water that the town authorities w T ere 
compelled to shut off the supply to the street pipes. Some arrests 
were made to furnish hostages for the wounded prisoners previously 
captured. 

. Many thousands of the w r ounded in Fredericksburg died, and the 
National Cemetery on Willis' Hill, above the town, now holds their 
remains, together with those of- the great numbers gathered from, 
previous battle-fields. The whole number of separate"soldiers whose 
remains, in whole or in part, are there buried is estimated to amount 
to not less than forty thousand. 



2b FREDERICKSBURG : PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE. 

During this occupation for the wounded, the people of Fredericks- 
burg endured suffering, disease and sorrow greater than any that 
had previously visited them. Yet it is an admitted truth that no 
considerate aid or courtesy was wanting on the part of the Federal 
officers which could mitigate the horrors of these scenes. In fact 
a sentiment of humanity was there developed on both sides which 
projected itself into the future. Had the soldiers and the good peo- 
ple of both sections been left to themselves after the war, without 
the stimulants furnished by the selfish rancor of politicians and 
place-hunters, complete good feeling would long ago have been re- 
established. 

With the period that has elapsed since the war and during the 
dismal stage of reconstruction, you are all familiar, and to tell you 
of it would be only to repeat a thrice told tale and unnecessarily 
" ivfandum renocare dolorem" to open again old wounds, and per- 
haps to cause hearts to bleed or eyes to weep that Time has been 
mercifully dealing: with. 

And, now, we have reviewed the history of Fredericksburg, as 
history is often written, but not as it ought to he written. For we are 
now to turn to a more interesting phase of the subject, and to speak 
and learn of the people themselves, their ways and maimers, their 
habits, and the individualisms which stood out from among them 
like basso relievos from a plain surface. A town does not consist in 
the buildings and houses that stand on its soil ; and the history of 
the town therefore is not the history of its houses, however vener- 
able some of them may be. This is a truth which has been already 
settled by the highest American authority, that is Yankee Doodle 
himself, for do we not know that — 

Yankee Doodle came to town 
, Dressed in leather trousers. 

He said he could not see the town. 
There were so man}' houses ! 

There is a proband truth involved in this old song, for if a stranger 
bad come to Fredericksburg in the olden time, and had seen only 
the houses, and never met with, and conversed with, and become 
acquainted with her people, and then gone away, it might truly be 
said of him that he had never seen the town. And this same 
truth is expressed in yet more lofty and sublime thought by the 
great English lawyer, Sir William Jones, who with all his mastery 
of twenty eight languages, and his power as a scholar, a jurist and a 



/ 



FREDERICKSBURG: PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE. 27 

legislator, never uttered nobler truth that in those immortal words : 

"What constitutes a State ? 
Not high raised battlement or labored mound, 

Thick wall or moated gate ; 
Not cities proud with spires and turrets crowned ; 

Not bays and broad-armed ports 
Where, laughing at the storm, rich navies, ride ; 

Not starred and spangled Courts, 
Where low browed baseness wafts perfume to pride. 

No ! Men, high-minded men, 
With powers as far above dumb brutes endued 

In forest brake or den, 
As beasts excel cold rocks and brambles rude ; 

Men who their duties know, 
And know their rights, and, knowing, dare maintain, 

Prevent the long aimed blow, 
And crush the tyrant while they rend the chain : 
These constitute a State. 

And so we say that the men and the women of the past of 
Fredericksburg are her true history, whether for glory or for shame. 

This town was once nominally call eel by a witty statesman a "fin- 
ished town," and her people have often been accused o f h&jng so 
entirely self-satisfied that they will not believe that any merit else- 
where can exceed her merit. But, irony aside, it is a fact generally 
admitted — and admitted by none more readily than by people at a 
distance — that the men and women whom Fredericksburg has, from 
time to time, sent out from her bosom into all parts of our country 
and of the world, and the men and women whom she has retained 
or adopted have contributed to establish for her a marked and con- 
sistent reputation for intellectual activity and genial qualities. It is 
not impossible that a philosophical reason or series of reasons for 
this fact may be found in the conditions that have surrounded Fred- 
ericksburg ; her moderate and pleasant climate — her excellent wa- 
ter, her environment of picturesque hills and flowing river ; the 
beauty and fascinating qualities of her women ; her cheapness in 
the necessaries of life; and,. above all, in that happy medium be- 
tween the size of a small and stagnant village, and a large and bust- 
ling city, which she has for nearly a century maintained, and which 
is eminently adapted to develope active individualism of character, 
alike removed from the sluggish life of a village, and the forced 
dead-level of a huge city. 

But whatever may have been the causes, the fact is certain. Fred- 



28' FREDERICKSBURG: PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE: 

ericksburg has, from revolutionary times downward, always had with- 
in her or about her, mental activity. She has never been blessed or 
cursed with Rip Van Winkleism. It is true that her people in or- 
der to clevelope pabulum for thought, have been occasionally obliged., 
for want of more profitable occupation, to resort , to seats on dry- 
goods'boxes on the business avenues, or to convenient corners for 
the debates of social juntos ; "or, on graver occasions^ to the Town 
Hall or Court-house for public .discussion ; but they have always . 
kept their minds alert and polished by friction., and ready for busi- 
ness when business should call ; and if they have sometimes ex- 
pended their immense reserve and superfluity of thought in con- 
triving practical jokes and questionable amusements, yet very sel- 
dom have these excesses ever assumed forms of deliberate and ma- 
lignant mischief. 

INDIVIDUALISMS. 

With this brief introduction, I propose to speak of some- of the 
marked characters that .have appeared either in Fredericksburg or 
in the country in contact with -her, and connected with her destinies. 
One of the earliest of those of whom we have any authentic ac- 
count was Francis Thornton, the great-great grand-father of our be- 
loved female citizens, Mrs. Fitzgerald and Mrs. Forbes. And when 
I state that Mrs. Fitzgerald, having nearly attained her eighty-eighth 
i 7 $?Z. ^/prcb.My now our oldest inhabitant, I carry 3-011 back to a 
very respectable antiquity in bringing to your notice her great-great 
grand-father. 

lie was from Yorkshire, in England; came to Virginia after he 
attained to manhood, and acquired title to a very large tract of land 
in this region, lie was a tall and powerfully built man, active and 
athletic. His residence was long in the neighborhood "of the Falls- 
Plantation ; but I suppose his actual dwelling-house is not now in ex- 
istence. Tie was fond of out door occupations and sports — hunting,. 
fishing and swimming. There is a tradition that he had occasional 
encounters with the Rappahannock Indians, and that in one of them, 
in which he had the aid of a few hardy spirits like himself, nothing 
but his great courage and strength saved the white party from de- 
struction. But these incidents we are not sufficiently authenticated 
to justify me in giving them as history. It is certain, however^ 
that he sought, adventure among the lower animals, fish — flesh and 
flowl — with which this region then abounded ; and within the mem- 
ory of the living, an old citizen of Falmouth has seriously declared 
that he had found in or around the falls terrapins and fresh water 
turtles, which had on their shells the initials F. T. distinctly cut with 



FREDERICKSBURG : PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE. 29 

the point of a knife. And on one occasion lie had an encounter 
with a sturgeon which is worthy of note because it was characteris- 
tic of the man : The sturgeon had made his way up the river dur- 
ing a light freshet, above ordinary deep water. Francis Thornton, 
finding this large fell in some of the shallow waters of the falls, un- 
dertook to secure him, and for this purpose plunged into the water 
and seized his head ; but his hands becoming entangled in the gills 
the fish struggled so violently that he made his way with his captor 
into the deeper water. Any ordinany man would have gladly re- 
leased him, but this Yorkshire gentleman resolved otherwise, and by 
a remarkable exertion of his great strength and skill in wading and 
swimming, actually succeeded in forcing the sturgeon back to the 
shallow water and secured him. It was by such men that the wil- 
derness was subdued, and Virginia secured tor the Anglo-Saxon 
race. 

The great grand-son of this gentleman was Francis Thornton, 
whom many now living remember as the owner and occupier of the 
Fall Hill estate above Fredericksburg. And though the Indian 
fights, just mentioned, may be apocryphal, yet it is certain that the 
life of an Indian was closely connected with his life. During the 
administration of Alexander Spotswood as Governor of Virginia, 
a young Indian girl became domesticated in his family. Whether 
she was actually a captive in some of the irregular wars with the 
savages, or whether she was one of the numerous hostages whom 
Governor Spotswood required the Indian Sachems to deliver up as 
security for their peaceable demeanor is not certainly known. Her 
name was Katina, and after some time spent in the Spotswood fam- 
ily she was, with her own consent, transferred to the Thorntons, and 
became the nurse of Francis Thornton, the younger. She formed 
for her young charge the strongest attachment. She carried him 
with her into the woods and fields and taught him many of the In- 
dians' devices which she b&d not forgotten. On one occasion when 
they had been missed for some time, the father of the child sought 
them in the thick undergrowth on a part of the farm now known 
as Snowden, above Fredericksburg, the present residence of John L. 
Stansbury. Here Ivatina was found seated on the ground with the 
little boy near her, in a state of high delight at her success in trap- 
ping a number of live partridges which she had enticed into a wicker 
basket or cage, and was now exhibiting to her happy young charge. 
When Francis Thornton was about seventeen years old, this Indian 
woman died, and her death caused him so much of grief and de- 
pression that he could never hear it mentioned, or speak of it in. 
subsequent life without the moot unaffected distress. 



80 FREDERICKSBURG PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE. 

The art of practical pleasantry is one in which a very great num- 
ber of proficients have appeared in this town whose deeds have been 
confined to no special epoch of her career. They have often exhib- 
ited strange mental traits, and the point of the joke has often been 
attained by elaborate thoughts and preparation which, applied to any 
other subject, would have gone far towards useful and beneficial 
success. 

Early in this century there lived in Frederieksbiug an old French- 
man named Campion. He lived in the upper part of the town. 
He was very poor, and such work as he could find was precarious 
and often unremunerative. He was often in want, and though not 
■ a recognized pauper, was assisted, with much good humor and kind- 
heartedness, by the people in his neighborhood. And in return for 
their benefactions many of them felt at liberty to amuse themselves 
by innumerable pleasantries in word and deed at his expense. On 
one dark night, at precisely nine o'clock, when the old Frenchman 
was getting somewhat sleepy ; a knock was heard at his door. He 
opened it ; a man stood there who asked in a earnest voice : " Is 
Mons. Tonson here ?" He politely replied ; "Jon ; Mons. Tonson 
does not live here. Mons. Campion lives here." Then the enquirer 
■withdrew. Half an hour afterwards, as the old man was preparing 
to go to bed, another lcud knock was heard at the door. Half 
asleep he opened it, and again a stranger presented himself with the 
question: "Is Mons. Tonson here?" The Frenchman began to 
W T ax angry, and answering loudly, No ! he shut the door in the face 
of his visitor, and went to bed. But hardly had he fallen into the 
first sweet sleep, before another half hour had passed, and again a 
tremendous knocking aroused him to which, in his confused state, 
he answered by again presenting himself at the door. The same 
question drew forth an explosion of wrath, and again he went to 
bed. But the inveterate jokers were not to be foiled. At the end 
of every half hour from 9 to 4 in the morning, a fresh man de- 
tailed for the pjurpose, knocked at the door, and when Campion re- 
fused to rise from his bed, but howled therefrom like a goaded tiger, 
still the same question was shouted out : " Is Mons. Tonson here ? " 
and still the answer came, mingled with sacres threats and objur- 
gations which roused the whole neighborhood. The next clay Cam- 
pion went to the Mayor's office to get out a warrant, but on giving 
his account of the matter, the Mayor was almost convulsed by his 
efforts to restrain his laughter and to look officially grave ; and 
moreover, it was found that Mons. Campion, though he had h is sus- 
picions, could not identify one single offender, and could not swear 
to any state of facts which involved an actual violation of law. 
Therefore the matter was dropped, and he was quickly pacified by 



FREDERICKSBURG: FAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE. ol 

the practical kindness of the very men who had perpetrated this 
practical joke. 

In the interval between the rears 18-30 and 1845, this spirit was 
all alive in Fredericksburg. There existed then a secret club or as- 
sociation known among themselves as "The Jaw Bone Club." 
They -had no declared "objects ; no constitution; no by-laws; no 
rule's or regulations of any kind— at least none that were ever re- 
vealed. I am not able to say who were members of this club, or 
who was its officers. I only know that John Terry, Charles A. 
Pearson, Wm. H. Murphy, James Cunningham, James Harrison 
and Turner Ramsay were leading spirits in its operations. How 
many others were united with them, and who they were, has 'not 
been disclosed. Their object seemed to be, by, union of eftort, un- 
der certain impulses of fun, which were under thorough discipline, 
to extract as much enjoyment as possible from any suitable subjects 
for practical jokes. On one occasion a Stafford man came into 
Fredericksburg, and meeting casually with James Cunningham, en- 
tered into conversation. Being asked what was new in Stafford, he 
answered that in his neighborhood the people were very much 
troubled about mad dogs. " Mad dogs ? " said Cunningham ; "why 
don't you get the corporation gun ? " " What is that ? " asked the 
Stafford man. "Why, said Mr. Cunningham," it is a gun which 
is infallible death to every mad dog it comes near." The Stafford 
man was greatly excited and asked eagerly how it could be obtained. 
" Nothing easier," said Cunningham. " I had it not long ago to 
kill a mad dog, but I have passed it to another gentleman. It is 
going the rounds all the time. I will give you an order for it by 
"which you can get it." He accordingly wrote an order directing it 
to Charles A. Pearson, and requesting him to deliver to bearer the 
corporation gun. On ^presentation to Mr. Pearson he remarked 
gravely that he had parted with it only the day before ; but he 
would endorse on the back of the order a written request to the 
party who had it, which would answer every purpose. This new 
order was directed to Mr. John Terry. By this time night had ar- 
rived. The Stafford citizen could not find Mr. Terry until the next 
morning after breakfast. On reading the paper he expressed re- 
gret that he had not the gun, but comforted the gentleman by telling 
him lie knew where it was and could put him in the way to obtain 
it. He said to him, " The gun is now hanging up in the front part of 
the store of Mr. William Redd, on Commerce street. It is public 
property, and is intended for the use of all who wish to kill mad 
dogs. Mr. Redd is somewhat strange in his wavs and may not be 
disposed to deliver it to you. You need not ask him for it, You 



O'A FREDERICKSBURG : PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE. 

have seen all the necessary parties, and I will write on this paper a, 
full authority, under which you can go and take down the gun and 
carry it home with you." And so the writing was given; the gen- 
tleman proceeded to the store, and seeing a gun hanging up near 
the front door, forthwith mounted on a keg of nails and had actual- 
ly cut one of the suspending cords, when William Redd catching 
sight of the proceeding through the glass sash of his counting-room 
rushed out upon him. His hostile look so alarmed the man that he 
left the gun hanging by one cord, and took to his heels, pursued by 
Mr. Redd, who raised hue and cry upon him as a thief; but the 
man was fleet of foot and succeeded in crossing Chatham bridge 
and escaping into Stafford. Justice requires me to add that when 
William Redd, who relished a joke, learned about the order he 
laughed as heartily as other people, and sent the Stafford gentleman 
a message that he . might come safely to Fredericksburg when he 
chose. 

These details as to the "Jaw Bone Club" and its proceedings 
have been given to me by my friend and former school-mate, Charles 
A. "Shepherd, who has also furnished many authentic particulars as 
to Wm. Ii. Murphy (commonly called Billy Murphy), who kept a 
store, and Isaac Jones (commonly known as Jew Jones), who was 
then the only citizen of Hebrew descent in Fredericksburg, tho' 
since the war, some of her most enterprising residents have been of 
that ancient and interesting race. 

I can only speak, in passing on, of the peculiar relations between 
Billy Murphy and Jew Jones, and tell how Murphy, by most adroit 
and elaborate maneuvres, continued though five years, succeeded, on 
two several occasions, in inducing Jew Jones to receive from him 
cigars, in each case, loaded in their folds with gunpowder, and which, 
when the Jew lighted them while applied to his mouth, instantly 
exploded, marking his face, in one instance, with black spots which 
he long bore ; and how in another case, in a dark night Murphy 
crouched down in a deep gutter which was then along side of the 
curb-stone, near the present postoffice, by which route he knew that 
Jew Jones was about to pass ; and when the Jew stepped on him 
he rose up, whereby the Jew was overthrown and covered with mud, 
and how Murphy succeeded in moving back into the sitting-room 
of the Farmers' Hotel (which was then the great place of rendezvous 
for jokers) in time to take his seat, with a grave fa?e, before the 
Jew arrived ; and how Mr Jones came in and declared that he had 
stepped on a big black hog, applying, also, to the supposed hog an 
epithet which reverence forbids me to repeat, and how ho had fallen 



FREDERICKSBURG : PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE. 3 § 

and bemired himself, and how outrageous it was in the Common 
Council to permit hogs to run in the streets, and Murphy sympa- 
thized with him, and proposed to get up a petition on the subject, td 
the Council. But with all his repeated and sometimes severe pleas- 
antries at his expense, Murphy was always a true friend to the Jew, 
and often helped him when he was in want or in trouble. 

This good-humored habit of exercising the mind in ingenious 1 
contrivances for merriment and fun had its effect even on the col- 
ored people of Fredericksburg, many of whom emerged from the 
common level and became characters almost as well-known as some 
of the white humorists. I can only mention three by name, all of 
whom may perhaps be remembered by some present. One was 
John Campbell, commonly called " Old John Campbell." His 
specialty was attending funerals. He was never known to be ab- 
sent from the funeral of a coloTed person ; and attended all the 
funerals of the white people that he could possibly reach. On these 
occasions, he always wore the same hat, adorned with a black band 
and crape weepers behind : so that whenever he was seen wearing 
this hat and wending his way in any direction, it was equivalent to 
a notice that a funeral procession would come from that point. The 
next colored character to be noted was Jenny Ham. She was st> 
eccentric that she was sometimes thought to be insane; but there 
was so much of shrewdness and method in her madness that the 
better medical opinion was against this theory. She would never 
permit any person to cross her track without taking instant measures 
to resent it or to avert the evil omen ; and many a tub Or bucket of 
water has descended on the head of the unlucky iirshin who at- 
tempted this perilous feat. She had a daughter, who bore a name 
of her own dictation, and which she would repeat to any serious 
questioner with intense volubility. It was a fair rival to some of 
the names of German princesses. It was as follows: Mary, Mar- 
garet, Molly, Polly, Todd, Yankee Doodle, Yahoo, Rooliper, Trooli- 
per, Woolfolk Ham. 

But, beyond doubt, the most eminent colored character was Buddy 
Taylor, who died only a few years ago. He was a man of large 
size and stature, and, in his prime, of gigantic strength. His com- 
plexion was black, but having an aquiline nose, he always denied 
that he was an Ethiopian, and insisted that he was a Carthaginian, 
and thus claimed connection with the blood of Hannibal and 
Hanno. His peculiarities were many; but that which most distin- 
guished him was the ability to coin and use words of sesquipeda- 
lian length and thundering sound, of which the word " mahanios- 
tanating" must serve as a single specimen. His language was 



84 FREDERICKSBURG.: PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE. 

marvelous in. this, that though every sentence contained a large 1 
proportion of words which belonged neither to the English language 
nor to any other known language, ancient or modern, yet, when the 
sentence was finished, it seldom failed to impress on, the hearer's 
mind a distinct, incisive stamp of the idea which Buddy Taylor 
wished to express. Therefore he was seldom misunderstood ; and 
I have always thought that the phenomena exhibited by his mind 
and language were worthy of the deepest study of the professed 
psychologist. On one occasion, about the year 1832, there was an 
exhibition in the Town Hall of Fredericksburg of the nitrous-oxyd 
or exhilarating gas, the properties of which were first discovered 
by Sir Humphrey Davy. The effect of this gas is known to be to 
develop into high activity the prevalent and prominent traits of 
real character in the person who breathes it. And the fact that by 
far the larger number fight furiously with fists, feet and teeth, is 
considered a sad proof that since the fall, man has been born a 
fighting animal. When Buddy Taylor was brought in for the pur- 
pose and breathed this gas, much interest was felt, and the crowd 
gathered in a silent circle around him. And, true to his prevalent 
habit, the moment the tube was removed from his lips, he stepped 
forth into the circle and delivered a speech which, I can truly say, 
was unparalleled and inimitable, for nothing bearing the slighest 
resemblance to it is found in all the literature of the world, 

I am not willing to leave this sub] ect of individual character with- 
out at least a passing notice of certain choice spirits, who were ac- 
customed to resort to Fredericksburg from the county of King; 
George ; and as I have already mentioned the Farmers' Hotel, it is 
proper now to speak of the old Indian Queen Tavern or Hotel,, 
which stood on Main street, nearly on the spot where Mr. Stone- 
braker has a ware-room for agricultural machinery. This Indian 
Queen Hotel was burned to the ground at mid-day, about the year 
1831. It had been the place where the choice spirits aforesaid most- • 
ly did congregate. In King George there is a region, formerly, and 
perhaps now, known as Chotank, which has been mentioned in con- 
nection with its favorate beverage by St. Leger Landon Carter in 
his genial essay, " The Mechanician and Uncle Simon." From this 
region chiefly came the spirits of whom I am to speak. Mr. Carter 
was, beyond question, a poet. His longest poem, " The Land of 
Powhatan," though it has some beauties, was as a whole, a failure, 
and is not now in print. But had he never written anything save 
the two short poems, " The Sleet " and "The Mocking Bird," his 
possession of the divine afflatus would be beyond serious doubt. 
The first of these poems has lately been republished by the good 
taste of our ladv editor of the " Fredericksburg News " ; but as 



FREDERICKSBURG! PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE.. 35 

the latter is not generally accessible, and is connected with my pres- 
ent theme, and as it is not only true to the poetic soul, but true to 
the observed habits of the bird, I am sure you will forgive me for 
quoting a part of it : 

I saw him to-day, on his favorite tree 

Where he constantly comes in his glory and glee, 

Perched high on a limb, .which was standing out far 

Above all the rest, like a tall taper spar : 

The wind was then wafting that limb to and fro, 

And he rode up and down, like a skiff in a blow, 

When it sinks with the billow, and mounts with its swell ; 

He knew I was watching — he knew it full well. 

He folded his pinions, and swelled out his throat, 
And mimicked each bird in its own native note, — 
The thrush and the robin, the red bird and all — ■ 
And the partridge would whistle and answer his call ; 
Then stopping his carol, he seemed to prepare, 
By the flirt of his wings, for a flight in the air. 
When rising sheer upward, he wheeled down again 
And took up his song where he left off the strain. 

What a gift he possesses of throat and of lungs, 
The gift apostolic — the gift of all tongues ! 
Ah ! could he but utter the lessons of love 
To wean us from earth and to waft us above, 
What siren could tempt us to wander again ? 
We'd seek but the siren outpouring that strain — 
Would listen to nought but his soft dying fall, 
As he sat all alone on some old ruined wall. 

Such was the mocking bird of King George, which inspired the 
poet's heart. But we have some accounts which attribute to this 
delightful bird sounds of another kind. For the facts now to be 
mentioned I am indebted to my good friend, Mr. John Randolph 
Bryan, who has recently become resident with us, and is a member 
of our Library Committee. He obtained his narrative* from the 
late Doctor David Tucker, who made his observations on the 
spot in Chotank, in King George. On rising in the morning he 
was greeted by the joyous voices of the mocking birds. To his 
astonishment he discovered that they uttered articulate sounds al- 
most perfect imitations of the sounds from human organs. On lis- 
tening more attentively he heard the words, " Get up, get up," re- 
peated with animation. But soon other words from these bird-throats 
came With even more distinctness and life. They were "Julep, julep, 
julep." And then came many voices uniting in a mezzo-soprano, 
" Taste it, taste it, taste it," and finally came a deep-toned contralto 
chorus, " So good, so good, so good," and thus was ushered in with 



<B6 FREDERICKSBURG: PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE. 

music, after the manner of the ancient Greeks, the morning liba- 
tion in Chotank. 

But whatever sceptical doubts may arise as to this mocking; bird 
chorus, the facts now to be mentioned are well authenticated. I 
had them first from my faithful friend, the late Howson II. Wal- 
lace, who was often in King George and had many relations there. 
On one occasion a special carouse was proposed to be observed at 
the Indian Queen, and a select band, embracing the names of Talia- 
ferro, and Lewis, and Turner, and Hooe, and many others, assem- 
bled. To do lull honor to this august occason, a wash-tub of con- 
siderable dimensions was obtained from the laundry of the Hotel. 
This was filled nearly to the brim with the choicest liquors and mate- 
rials, compounded with an artistic skill that had no rival elsewhere,' 
even in Virginia. Loud was the tumultous joy — long and deep 
were the potations. As they went on, some of the stronger heads 
thought they perceived, from time to time, a distinct savor of leather 
in the liquid ; but they learnedly accounted for it by reminding each 
other that several bottles of sherry had gone into the tub. You 
know that this favorite wine, when genuine, is from Xeres, in the 
province of Andalusia in Spain, and that being brought down 
from the sunny vintage, in bags made from the skins of animals it 
acquires a peculiar flavor, which the initiated claim to be a special 
virtue. But when they reached nearly to the bottom of the tub , 
some ingredients were found which had not been put in by the 
artistic compounders. Being pulled out they were found to be a 
pair of leather boots, old, well-worn — with originally high heels, 
thick soles an,d double tops. Afterwards one of the youngest of 
the party confessed that he had slyly thrown them in before the 
carouse opened. But as he had taken his full share of the bever- 
age from the beginning, and had got very drunk and fallen under 
the table, for these good deeds he was forgiven, and his name has 
not transpired. 

And now it is time that we turn from these delineations of char- 
acter and manners in our town to graver themes. Among the many 
influences which have continued to develop the individualisms of 
the people of Fredericksbrg, three seem to demand special notice. 
These are— 1st, the schools ; 2d, the newspapers ; 3d the churches. 
Each of these sources of influence would require a separate lecture 
for its exposition. We can therefore only glance at them, but we 
may glance intelligently. 

SCHOOLS. 

The material that has reached me would enable me to treat quite 



FREDERICKSBURG: PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE. 37 

fully of the schools in and about Fredericksburg from the year 180Q 
to the present time. But I propose only to speak specially of three. 
One of these was that which succeeded the Female school taught 
by the late Rev, Samuel B. V\ ilson, in which many of the most 
agreeable women in Fredericksburg received their early education.. 
One of his pupils, and afterwards his assistant, was Miss Mary Ralls. 
She was the nearest approach to one who exercised disinterested 
benevolence that has appeared in our midst. She continued the 
female school, and after awhile, took in charge boys also. She 
called to her assistance a number of teachers, in succession, and, at 
last, called to her assistance a husband — an act constituting proba- 
bly her most signal display of unselfish benevolence. He was. 
Mons. Jean Baptists Herard, a French gentlemen, whose revolu- 
tionary principles and service with Napoleon the First made it ne- 
cessary for him to leave France when the Bourbons were restored 
to the throne, He was never able to speak English. He was poor 
and friendless. Miss Mary Ralls had compassion on him and mar- 
ried him. They were united in marriage in the old Presbyterian 
Church, which then stood on the lot now known as the Fredericks- 
burg Female Orphan Asylum. Rev. Mr. Wilson performed the 
marriage ceremony, and a young lawyer, skilled in the French lan- 
guage, translated its parts to Mons. Herard and received his assent.. 
It was then the usage of Doctor Wilson to close the ceremony with the 
words, " Salute your bride," addressed to the groom, who was ex- 
pected to obey by decorously raising the veil of the bride and kiss- 
ing her lips. It seems probable that this part of the ceremony had 
-not been sufficiently explained to Mons. Herard, and that his ideas 
on the subject had become confused by some usages in the provinces 
of France with which he was familiar. Be this as it may, it is cer- 
tain that as soon as the words had been uttered in English by the 
clergyman, and rendered into French by the interpreter, Mons. He- 
rard seized the bride under her arms, and, to the unspeakable con- 
sternation of herself and her female friends, danced her tumultuo.us- 
ly up and down the whole length of the front aisle of the church — her 
little feet twinkling and flashing with the rapidity of the movement,, 
and her face presenting a lively image of mingled womanly triumph 
and despair. Reverence for the sacred building forbade merriment in- 
side; but some persons casually passing by were amazed to see the 
doors thrown open and a number of gentlemen rush out and roll 
themselves over and over on the grass of the church-yard in con- 
vulsions of laughter. Among them was the late Dr. Beverly R, 
Wellford, who afterwards often narrated the scene. 

This marriage union, thus cheerfully inaugurated, was on the 
whole a happy one. Mons, Herard, though he could not speak 



•3 8 FREDERICKSBURG : PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE. 

English, taught writing and French in the school. Here com- 
menced the education of a large number of girls and boys, who 
were afterwards well-known in the social circles and business pur- 
suits of Fredericksburg, and of many other parts of the United 
States. Among the boys I may be permitted to' mention as my 
school-fellows, George Scott, William Barton, now your circuit 
judge, his brother Howard, now a physician, and who attended 
General Robert E. Lee in his last illness ; John Beverly Stanard, 
Robert Wellford, who married Fannie Littlepage Stevenson, be- 
•came a physician and died comparatively young ; another Robert 
Wellford, from Tallahasse, Florida ; Peter Gray, a son of William 
F. Gray, and brother of Mrs. Doswell of Fredericksburg, and who 
became a circuit judge in Texas, and was a member of the Con- 
federate House of Representatives, during the war; Robert and 
John L. Marye, who need no introduction to you ; Edward Carter, 
a relative of the Wellford family, a boy of great courage and 
promise, but who perished in his early youth, by shipwreck, in go- 
ing round by sea from Norfolk to New York ; and Byrd Stevenson, 
the youngest son of Carter L. Stevenson, who was long Common- 
wealth's attorney in our town. 

In the school of Madame Herard, the studies of history, geogra- 
phy, grammar, rhetoric, and the French language were, I think, 
carefully and successfully taught. But arithmetic was not well 
taught until her brother, Mr. Nathaniel Ralls, became an as- 
sistant in the school. He was a fine arithmetician, and a vast im- 
provement immediately took place. Prior to his coming, it is my 
impression that arithmetic could not have been recognized, in this 
school, as a branch of the exact sciences. This impression is founded 
not only on general recollections, but one special incident, which 
must be related as a sign of those times. The most advanced class 
in arithmetic was at work one whole morning on a sum in what was 
then called " The Single Rule of Three," the answer to which was 
in land measure. After many vain efforts the boys gloomily assured 
the assistant teacher that they could not get the answer. This 
teacher's efforts were then applied, but were equally in vain. Fi- 
nally a question came to the class from the teacher's lips in these 
exact words : " How much do it lack of the answer? ' ; Immedi- 
ately a voice replied, " It wants one acre, two rods and twenty- 
seven perches of the answer." ."That's near enough," said the 
teacher ; and, the knot being thus happily cut, the boys went on 
their way rejoicing. 

It has been supposed by some that Mons. Herard was actually one 
of the regicide deputies who voted for the execution of Louis Six- 



FREDERICKSBURG ■ : PAST,. PRESENT AND FUTURE. o!/ 

teentb ; but the careful volumes of Thiers furnish no evidence that 
his name was in that list — that fearful list — -to some execrable — to 
others immortal— to ail profoundly impressive. But, that his Whole 
heart and soul were fired with the revolutionary spirit was clear to* 
all who knew him. On one occasion two accomplished ladies-, 
who had visited France and spoke the language, spent an evening 
at his residence, which was then the small wooden building opposite 
to the house of Mr. Edward Crutch-field, our superintendent of 
schools. As the evening passed on, one of these ladies, who was a 
fine vocalist, by request, commenced singing the grand hymn of 
the Marseillaise Hardly had she commenced before Mons. Herard 
sprang from his seat in uncontrollable emotion, and when she reached 
the line, " Marchons, Mwchons, et Serrez v'os battaillons I " he leaped 
into the air, waved his hand around his head and, taking up the 
strain, sang verse after verse with gesticulations almost frantic in 
their energy. And even in his retired life, he proved that he had 
not forgotten some of the sharpest remedies of his country's revo- 
lutionary times. He was fond of gardening, and of raising pigeons. 
A cat in the neighborhood had made some bloody incursions upon 
his squabs. He watched his movements, saw that he came in 
through a hole in the close fence round his garden, set a bag around 
the hole, caught the cat, and conducted him in triumph to a scaffold 
erected for the purpose. Here -the glittering axe descended, and 
the cat's head rolled in the dust, followed by a torrent of blood. Of 
these tragic events, we were apprized in the sehool by a shriek from 
one of the female teachers, Miss Antoriia Brent, w T ko was looking 
out of the window and saw the act of decapitation. But though 
the female teachers and some of the female scholars were shocked, 
the boys were delighted with the whole proceeding. And they 
were probably right ; for this cat was a malignant and confirmed 
avicide and deserved his fate. 

"When the revolution of 1830 took place, which drove Charles 1 
the Tenth from the throne of France, the people of Fredericksburg 
fired one hundred guns. Mons. Herard walked up and' clown Main 
street from breakfast time until nearly sunset, with a tricolored 
ribbon on his coat-breast, and a look of rapt revolutionary fervor on 
his countenance. He was deeply disappointed at the continuation 
of the monarchy under Louis Phillipe of Orleans. He died a few 
years afterwards. How would that old heart, now cold in death, 
have bounded with joy could he have lived to see the present Ee- 
publican government of that great and chivalrous people ! 

The next school to be noted was that of Mr. John Goolrick, in 
the building now occupied by the Misses Vass. His residence was 



4-0 Fredericksburg: past, present and future-. 

the wooden building next above. He was an Irishman by birtb 5 
and was related to tne family of which Judge John T. Goolriek, 
present Judge of the Corporation Court of Fredericksburg, is a 
descendant. lie was assisted in bis School by his son George, who 
was decrepit in body, but highly cultured in mind. Mr. John Gool- 
rick was long the surveyor of Fredericksburg, and was assuredly 
one of its eminent characters. He was deeply skilled in mathe- 
matics, and was always pleased when his scholars made such previ- 
ous progress as would justify their transfer to the classes in geom- 
etry. He believed in Euclid, and did not believe in the modern 
follies which attempt to teach that an 1 angle may be formed by one 
straight line, and that possibly some where in the universe of 
thought, two added to two may make five-. This last heresy is the 
idea of John Stuart Mill, and is akin to the ideas of the skeptical 
and materialistic school of the present day, who call their system 
agnosticism. This system teaches that man in his present state knows 
nothing and cannot possibly know anything of God or of ultimate 
Truth ; and hence it follows that for aught we know or can know 
■in this world, good may be evil, God may be Satan, and Heaven 
may be Hell. Mr. Goolrick being a devout and Catholic Christian $ 
utterly repudiated any such philosophy. He believed in geometry, 
and such was the thoroughness of his methods, that several pupils in 
his school were able to stand up before him, and upon his calling by 
book and number for any proposition in Euclid, to repeat the theme 
and instantly give the demonstation. It is at least doubtful whether 
this could now be done in any college in our land. The black- 
board in his day was unknown, but the geometrical figures were 
projected by rule, scale and compasses, and were therefore far more 
symmetrical than any that now appear on the black board. He not 
only delighted to teach geometry but trigonometry, both plain and 
spherical — surveying and navigation — algebra even to the dif- 
ferential calculus, and conic sections to the hyperbola and the 
asymptotes. His modes of discipline were only two — keeping in 
after school hours, and the rod. He believed in the rod, and had 
two forms thereof; one* the common form, consisting of tolerably 
stout and long twigs cut from the althea bushes in his garden ; the 
other a more solemn form, kept for high occasions, being a seasoned 
cane of bamboo, with an ivory head, and which by frequent use^ 
had become split into two parts, though united at the handle and 
ferule. In this school I first met my friend Charles A. Shepherd, 
and his brother Sandy Shepherd, who was the hero of a most ludic- 
rous scene, which want of time forbids me to narrate. 

The last school we can note is that of Thomas H. Hanson. He 
was originally from Georgetown, and was educated tor the bar; but 



FREDERICKSBURG : PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE. 41 

his modesty was so great that he found it seriously to interfere with 
his success in the practice of law. lie was a line classical scholar, 
and his school always deserved " par excellence " the name of a 
classical school. The Greek and Latin languages and history and 
antiquities of Greece and Rome were sedulously taught in it, and 
few who have ever passed studiously through this school have failed 
in some form, to make their mark upon their day and generation. 
In this school I first met my friend Mr. A. P. liowe, our delegate 
in the General Assembly. 

Mr. Hanson, though modest and unassuming, was perfectly firm 
in temper, and, when roused, was formidable. He was a man of 
true piety — read prayers in his school, and sometimes read or deliv- 
ered a short moral or religious lecture. Some of the boys under 
his care long remembered the impression left by his reading the 
pathetic narrative of the death of young Altamount, by Doctor Ed- 
ward Young, the author of the '* Night Thoughts." Mr. Hanson 
was a member of the Episcopal Church ; but though he loved his 
own church, and was what is sometimes called a good churchman, 
he was never illiberal or exclusive in creed or practive ; and was 
ever ready to recognize and work with his brethren of other com- 
munions. 

These schools are but specimen presentations of the schools of 
Fredericksburg, which have always been good. I must now leave 
them to say a few words on the newspapers of the town. 

NEWSPAPERS. 

The first paper established was the " Virginia Herald and Fal- 
mouth Advertiser," by Timothy Green, in 1786. It was, after some 
years, conducted by Green, Lacy & Harrow, and for a year or two 
by ¥m, F. Gray. Finally all other interests were bought out by 
James 1). Harrow, who was a practical printer, and who conducted 
it for a number of years under the style of the Virginia Herald. 
In 1851, after Mr. Harrow's death, it was purchased by Major Kelly, 
who conducted it successfully until a few years ago when , finding his 
type much worn, his subscriptions much in arrear and hard to col- 
lect, and probably his own health, circumstances and surroundings 
inclining him to an easier life than that of a political editor, he 
wound up and discontinued this venerable semi-weekly. In 1800 
another semi-weekly was started under the name of " The Courier," 
by James "Walker as editor and proprietor It was issued Tuesday 
and Friday, at 20 shillings ($3.34) per annum. A file of this paper 
running from November, 1800, to November, 1801, in bound form, 



42 FREDERICKSBURG : PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE. 

has survived the lapse of time and the desolations of the war, and 
has been kindly submitted to my examination by the owner, Mr, 
James L. Green, of Fredericksburg. It was started to promote the 
interests of the Jefferson party, then called the Republican party,, 
and its first number states that it is the successor and continuation of 
the paper entitled " The Genius of Liberty," which had been con- 
ducted in Fredericksburg by Mr. Robert Mercer. This file of the 
" Courier " is interesting because of its age and associations ; but it 
is strangely deficient in all local information, and but for the adver- 
tisements and an occasional notice of a horse race, a public dinner., 
a ball, or a theatrical performance, it might as well have been pub- 
lished in Boston as in Fredericksburg. It does not even give quo- 
tations of the Fredericksburg market until near its close. The 
first quotation is October 27th, 1801, when a brief list is given, 
quoting tobacco at $4.00 ; flour — superfine at $7.75 per barrel ; fine 
$7.25 per barrel; wheat $1.25 per bushel; Indian corn, $4.00 per 
barrel ; and meal $3.34 per barrel. Even the poetry is generally 
second-hand, being for the most part selected from the English 
humorist, who wrote under the name of Peter Pindar. But, one 
brief poem, undoubtedly of home manufacture, appears in the num- 
ber for February, 13th, 1801, and this I shall quote for the benefit of 
my brethren of the bar, that they may comfort their hearts by the 
reflection that these present times are not the only times in which 
they have been heartily abused. It is headed " Epitaph on a Law- 
yer," and runs thus : 

Here lies tlie vile dust of the sinfullest wretch 
That ever the Devil delayed to fetch ; 
And the reader will grant it was needless he should, 
When he saw he was coming as fast as he could. 

The Fredericksburg News was established by Robert Baylor 
Semple and, after his death, was purchased by Archibald Alexander 
Little, who conducted it to the time of his death. It is still in suc- 
cessful progress. The " Political Arena " was edited from about 
the year 1830 to 1845 by Win. M. Blackford, who afterwards re- 
moved to Lynchburg. The " Democratic Recorder " was conducted 
at first by Robert Alexander and James B. Sener, and afterwards 
by S. Greenhow Daniel. The names of " The Virginia Star," 
"Fredericksburg Ledger," the "New Era," " The Independent," 
and the "Recorder" are too familiar to those now living to need 
detailed narrative. 

CHURCHES. 

Leaving the newspapers, we must now briefly notice the churches 
of Fredericksburg. The Baptist first comes into view in June, 1768, 



FREDERICKSBURG: PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE. 43 

and in a manner strongly forecasting the struggle which religions 
freedom was about to inaugurate with the vicious, but venerable 
principle of church establishment. At that time, three zealous 
Baptists, John Waller, Lewis Craig and James Childs, were seized 
by the Sheriff of Spotsylvania and carried before three magistrates 
in the yard of the church-building. The nominal charge against 
them was for " preaching the Gospel contrary to law," but their real 
ofience has been disclosed to us by old Doctor Semple, who says 
that a certain lawyer vehemently accused them, and said, " May it 
please your "Worships, these men are great disturbers of the peace; 
they cannot meet a man upon the road but they must ram a text of 
Scripture clown his throat." They were ordered to jail in Fred- 
ericksburg, and as they passed through the streets they sang in solemn 
concert the hymn beginning, " Broad is the road that leads to 
death." While in jail, they preached through the iron gratings of 
the windows and door. The people listened in awe, and already a 
spirit was awakened which grew in might until it grappled with and 
overthrew not only the established church, but the principles on 
which it was founded. 

It is not my purpose to trace minutely the history of each church 
in Fredericksburg, and therefore it will suffice here to say of the 
Baptist Church that she has accomplished a good work, and that 
few of her deeds have been. better or wiser than that which placed 
over her most important church here as its spiritual guide, its pres- 
ent pastor ; and which has enabled our Library Association to gain 
as her second president the Rev. Dr. Thomas S. Dunaway. Two 
eolored Baptist churches are also here, and well organized. 

Previous to the revolution, the Methodist Church had no distinct 
existence in Fredericksburg, and, indeed, none in America. But, 
after the ordination of Dr. Coke and his assistants, the Church 
planted itself here, and, with its accustomed zeal and fervor, grew 
rapidly in numbers. Its oldest church-building stood on the lot 
near Liberty town, back of the lot now known as the town 
park. It has entirely disappeared. But two comparative mo'dern 
buildings succeeded it, the last of which was erected inconsequence 
of the division in sentiment between the Northern and Southern 
Methodists. Among the numerous able Methodist divines who 
have been in Fredericksburg, I will only mention the venerable 
father in God, Mr. Kobler, who was long a resident among us. His 
holy life gave him much influence. His quaint and uncompromis- 
ing honesty was exhibited in a prayer offered by him soon after the 
first election of General Andrew Jackson as President. After 
praying for his health and happiness and success in bis administra- 



44 FREDERICKSBURG: PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE. 

tion as President, he added solemnly the words, " Though Thou, 
Lord, knowest well that we did not want him." 

The history of the Episcopal Church in Fredericksburg furnishes 
ample food for philosophic and profitable thought. It was at first, 
of course, a part of the church system established by law. In 1732 
Ool. William Byrd visited the town and thus, in brief terms, de- 
scribes it: "Besides Colonel Willis, who is the top-man of the 
place, there are only one merchant, a tailor, a smith, an ordinary 
keeper, and a lady who acts both as a doctress and coffee-woman." 
In that year, 1732, the first church was erected in Fredericksburg. 
It was in the parish of St. George, which then embraced the whole 
county of Spotsylvania; and this county, as established in 1720, 
extended westward "to the river beyond the high mountains "— f. e. 
the Shenandoah, — and included not only its present territory, but 
all of the present territories of Orange, Culpeper, Madison, Green, 
and Rappahannock. During the period from the building of the 
first church 'in Fredericksburg, until 1734, Rev. Patrick Henry was 
the minister. He was uncle of the great orator. From that time 
to the end of the revolutionary war, only two clergymen need special 
notice. They were father and son, and both .bore the name of 
James Marye. The father was a native of France and belonged to 
that oppressed but noble people known as the Huguenots. They 
were uncompromising protestants, and Calvinists in faith and 
church-forms. The edict of Nantz, by which they were secured 
religious freedom and protected from persecution in France, was 
granted by the chivalrous Henry of Navarre — Henry Quatre — and 
was revoked in 1685 by that concentrated essence of all the worst 
vices of the Bourbons— Louis Fourteenth. In the persecutions 
preceding and attendiug this revocation, it is estimated that two 
hundred thousand Huguenots suffered martyrdom, and seven hun- 
dred thousand, embracing the most industrious and God-fearing peo- 
ple of France were driven from the kingdom. A considerable 
number of them came to Virginia and settled at Manakintown on 
the James river, about twenty miles above Richmond. Rev. James 
Marye became their minister, and so excellent was his reputation 
that the good people of Fredericksburg petitioned Governor Gooch 
to let them have him. He found nothing in the Articles or Service 
of the Episcopal Church which violated his conscience, therefore he 
was willing to come. He was inducted in October, 1735, and min- 
istered here for thirty-two years. He was succeeded by his son 
bearing the same name, who ministered to the church until 1780. 
The widow of the Rev. James Marye, Jr., long survived him, and 
was well-known to many now living, as were his daughters, Mrs. 
Dunn, Mrs. Smith, of Snowden, above Fredericksburg, to which al- 



FREDERICKSBURG* : PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE. 45 

lusion has been made, and Mrs. Adams, who long lived in the house 
now occupied by Mr. Robert T. Knox. 

It can give us no pleasure to dwell on that dismal period between 
the revolutionary measures which overturned the established church 
and the renaissance of this century, a period especially dismal to 
the true friends of episcopacy in this region, because neither in the 
character of the ministers nor in the continuous decline of piety, 
could they find any elements of hope. That some of the rectors in 
Fredericksburg, even during that period, were good men, cannot be 
doubted. But they were not of high-toned Christianity, and they 
labored under disadvantages not to be surmounted. And, by far, 
the greatest number were men of the world, who indulged them- 
selves in drinking, horse-racing and gaming. Rev. Mr. Slaughter 
does not, I believe, in his history of St. George's Parish, give the 
name of old Parson Mackonochie, who was so renowned for his 
convivial and card-playing habits that a naval officer born in our 
town, upon whom, in infancy, this old clergyman had sprinkled the 
water of baptism, was accustomed, in after life, to account for his 
own occasional aberations by the fact that he had been christened 
by old Parson Mackonochie. And an incident, narrated by the 
pious and authentic Bishop Meade, undoubtedly belongs to this 
period. I would not venture to relate it but for his high authority, 
and but for the tact that he states he obtained it from two old men 
of unfmpeached veracity, one or both of whom were present at the 
closino- scene of the drama. And though he does not state either 
the name of the clergyman or the place of the event, yet as he was 
often here at the close of this sad period, as the incident corresponds 
with habits then known to have prevailed here, and is in accord 
with other similar incidents known to have existed here, I think it 
no rash presumption to attribute it to Fredericksburg. 

He relates that a clergyman, who- was of great stature and strength 
and of highly strung passions, was accustomed to rule his vestry 
with a rod of iron. Wishing to lmve something done which only 
the vestry could do, he convened them. But a majority of them 
were unwilling to vote as he wished. A quarrel ensued ; high 
words were speedily followed by blows, and in tins pugilistic en- 
counter, the clergyman, by his gigantic strength and skill as a bruiser, 
got the better of the recusant vestrymen, mauled them unmerci- 
fully, and drove them from his presence. The affair naturally cre- 
ated great excitement, and in order to explain it and to justify him- 
self, the clergyman on the succeeding Sabbath day, preached a ser- 
mon on a- text from the book of Nehemiah, which read thus : " And 
I contended with them, and cursed them, and smote certain of 



46 FREDERICKSBURG : PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE. 

them, and plucked off their hair." These were sad times for the 
cause of religion. 

But in the year 1813 a. great change commenced. Rev. Edward 
Charles McGuire in that year came to the church first as lay reader, 
and after his ordination, as rector. His own diary has given an 
account of his reception, which must be here repeated. He says : 

" I was received by the people with veiy little cordiality, in consequence, I 
.suppose, of the shameful conduct of several ministers who had preceded me 
in this place. The church was in a state of complete prostration. Many per- 
sons ha 1 been driven away, and those who remained were much discouraged. 
Under these disastrous circumstances I commenced a career most unpromis- 
ing in the estimation of men." 

The result was a signal proof of the blessing always attending 
true piety and Christian zeal. He continued with the church to the 
time of his death in 1858 — a period of forty-five years from the 
beginning of his ministry. During this time, a series of sound re- 
ligious revivals amounting almost to a continuous revival visited his 
church, greatly adding to her numbers, and culminating in the year 
1858, just six months before his death, in the coming forward of 
eighty-eight persons at once to receive the rite of confirmation. 
The effect of this scene was almost over-powering to Doctor Mc- 
Guire, and was a fitting preparation for the enjoyment of the up- 
per Sanctuary to which he was so soon called. 

Since his death changes have occurred, under the influence of 
which the Episcopalians of Fredericksburg worship in two churches, 
St. George's, under the Rev. Mr. McBryde, and Trinity Church, 
under Rev. Doctor Murdaugh, to both of which gentlemen I am in- 
debted for valuable material for this lecture. 

The Presbyterian Church in Fredericksburg commenced its life 
under the labors of Rev. Samuel B. Wilson, who came to the town 
as a Domestic Missionary, in 1805. At that time only two Presby- 
terians existed in the town. One was a merchant from the Province 
of Ulster, in Ireland, Mr. John Mark, who was one of the first 
ruling elders; the other was Mrs. Caldwell (weeKirkpatrick), grand- 
mother of the late John S. Caldwell. The real and liie-giving 
themes of the gospel were then a novelty in Fredericksburg, and 
under their presentation, attended by Divine efficacy, the numbers 
gathered constantly increased until they were strong enough to 
build their first house of worship on the lot now occupied by the 
Asylum building. We have, of this period in the church's history, 
a very vivid and interesting account presenting the male worship- 



FREDERICKSBURG : PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE. 47 

era., Mark, Grinnan, Mundle, Seddon, Vass, Morson, Patton, Hen- 
derson, Wellford, Brook, Fitzgerald, and the even more devout 
female wosrhippers, Mrs. Mary Alexander, Mrs. Morson, of Holly- 
wood, and her daughters Marion and Eliza, Mrs. Patton, the donor 
of the ground, the daughter of Gen. Mercer; Miss Stevenson, Mrs. 
French, the Misses Lomax, Mrs. Allison, and Miss Marion Briggs 
from Harwood, given by a writer in Dr. Foote's Sketches of Vir- 
ginia, which I have felt strongly inclined to insert in this lecture ; but 
as it is in print and in form accessible to those whom it would most 
interest, I forbear. Dr. Wilson continued to be the pastor until 
1840, and has been followed in succession by Messrs. McPhail, 
Hodge, Lacy, Gilmer and Smith, — to the last of whom we are in 
large measure indebted for the success of the Fredericksburg 
Library. 

Under the impuse given by a sermon from Bishop McGill in 
1856, a Roman Catholic Church was established in Fredericksburg 
in 1859. And under occasional visits from Bishops Gibbons and 
Iveane, and the continued ministrations of the Rev. Fathers Hagan, 
Donnelan, O'Farrell, Sears, Brady, Becker and Tiernan, this church 
has not been permitted to languish. Although its congregation is 
not large, it embraces some of our successful citizens, and some 
who have proved themselves to be sincere and active friends of our 
Library enterprise. 

Passing how from the spiritual and mental influences coming 
from schools, newspapers, and churches, I propose to say a few words 
about the more material elements, viz : the old buildings in and 
around Fredericksburg. 

. OLD HOUSES. 

As accurately as I have been able to ascertain, the oldest house 
now in the city is the residence owned and occupied by our towns- 
man, Wm. A Little, although some others press it hard in the race 
of antiquity, and especially the old wooden building formerly the 
residence of Mary, the mother of Washington. It is somewhat re- 
markable that Mr. Little is also the owner of the oldest house in 
Stafford county, viz : the dwelling at Boscobel, which has a chimney 
slab bearing the date, 1752, and is, with good reason, supposed to 
have been built about half a century prior to that date, viz : about 
1702 — the very year that Queen Anne commenced her reign, and 
when Joseph Addison was yet a young man, and Alexander Pope 
was a small lad. But Mr. Little has -so renewed, extended and 



48 FREDERICKSBURG : PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE, 

adorned both his old mansions that it would be hard to find the pure 
originals. That fine old building, Chatham, opposite Fredericks- 
burg, was built by v\ m. Fitzhugh, a son of the original William 
Fitz Hugh, who is the progenitor of the Fitzhughs of Virginia, 
and who was of Norman extract, and same to Virginia as a lawyer 
to attend to some important interests of the King. Wm. Fitzhugh, 
of Chatham, did not continue there to reside, because he found that 
the abounding hospitality expected of him would bring him to pov- 
erty. His words were : " I can stand the expenses of my table but 
not the expenses of my stable"; and when we bear in mind that 
often during the Mulberry races it was common for six carriages, 
each drawn by four horses and each filled with male and female 
guests, and each attended by a black driver and footman, to drive 
up to his door before breakfast, we may feel the force of his words. 
The handsome building below Fredericksburg, known as Mansfield, 
long occupied by the Bernard family, and which was burned during 
the war, was 'erected by Mann Page, of the family of John Page, 
Governor of Virginia, in 1802, whose lineal ancestor, Mann Page, 
the first, began to build Rosewell, a magnificent and costly man- 
sion near Williamsburg, which he did not live to complete, but 
which his widow and oldest son completed after his death. The 
total cost was so enormous as to embarrass the whole family and 
cause the sale of nearly all their lands, and to call forth from the 
pious and prudent Bishop Meade some well-timed reflexions in his 
" Old Churches and Families of Virginia." The venerable old 
mansion near the western line of our town, known as "Kenmore," 
was built by Mr. Fielding Lewis, who married Betty, the sister of 
Gen. George Washington, and who was the grandfather of Mrs. 
McGuire, wife of Rev. Edward C. McGuire. The fine stuccoeing 
of this house could not have been executed by any native workman, 
and is believed to have been the work of an English soldier cap- 
tured during the revolution and sent for safe keeping to Fredericks- 
burg. The tradition in the Lewis family w T as that immediately after 
finishing his work he accidentally fell from the scaffold and was killed. 
Mr. Fielding Lewis had first selected as his place of residence the 
lot new occupied by Mr. George Shepherd, and had there erected a 
handsome residence, which before it was ever occupied, was de- 
stroyed by fire. He then built the Kenmore house. The dwelling 
now occupied by Mr. George Shepherd was erected by Robert 
Mackay, a merchant of Fredericksburg. 

Mary, the mother of Washington, selected for the place of her 
burial a spot on the Kenmore land, close by a rocky crag, which 
she preferred because, as she declared, it could never be cultivated. 



FREDERICKSBURG: PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE. 49 

Here her remains rest, and here the exact spot was pointed out by 
Mr. Bazil Gordon, the wealthy merchant of Falmouth, when prep- 
arations were being made about the year 1S82 to lay the corner 
stone of the present unfinished monument, under the eye of Presi- 
dent Andrew Jackson, with an imposing military and civic display. 

The lawyers of the past days of Fredericksburg are represented 
by the well-known names of Rootes, Miuor, Williams, Green, Stan- 
ard, Patton, Stevenson, Barton, Botts, Moncure, Herndon, Conway, 
Daniel, Marye, and Bernard ; the physicians oy the names of 
Mercer, French, Carter, Wellford, Hall, Herndon, Carmichael, 
father, son and grandson; the merchants by the names of Grinnan, 
Mundle, Eoss, Scott, Henderson, Patton, Moffett, Spence, Dunbar, 
Johnston, the Knoxes, Phillips, Mackay, and the Gordons — Samuel 
and Bazil. These last named were born in Scotland — the sons of a 
well-to-do landed proprietor near Xirkalclbright, a little village which 
has sent forth many successful merchants to America, among whom 
were Lenox, Maitland and Johnston, of New York. Bazil Gor- 
don was the younger brother, and was at school with a son of the 
celebrated Paul Jones, of naval memory, who was himself a neigh- 
bor of the Gordon family, and whose exploits have been immor- 
talized in history and in Cooper's fine sea novel, " The Pilot." Sam- 
uel and Bazil Gordon, after some hesitation between Falmouth and 
Dumfries, settled at Falmouth, about the year 1786, and became 
eminently successful merchants. After accumulating a fine fortune, 
Samuel bought the Kenmore estate and abandoned merchandise ; 
but Bazil continued in business, accumulating wealth, which at his 
death, was measured by millions. His adventures were nearly al- 
wavs successful ; but he owed much of his success to his native 
Scotch good sense, his perfectly temperate and regular habits, his 
self-reliance, which enabled him patiently to wait for results when 
he had formed his plans, and his serene temper, which secured 
for him friends in nearly all with whom he came in contact. lie 
died in 1847. 

SECRET SOCIETIES. 

I would be giving an incomplete view of Fredericksburg without 
some notice of the Masonic organizations and other analogous fra- 
ternities that have existed within her bounds. But this notice must 
necessarily be brief and imperfect as it is such only as one of the 
humble uninitiated may obtain. Free Masonry was introduced 
into Virginia certainly as early as the year 1725. The first Lodge 
organized was in Norfolk ; the second in Port Royal ; the third in 



50 FREDERICKSBURG : PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE. 

Petersburg ; the fourth in Fredericksburg. This last has the desig- 
nation No. 4, and is supposed to have been organized as early as 
1735, though its records of that date have perished. It was at first 
independent in its organization. J3ut in 1758 its Master, Daniel 
Campbell, according to a vote of the Lodge, while he was visiting 
Scotland, procured from the Grand Lodge of that country a charter 
for No. 4, which bore date 21st July, 1758. Id 1787 a charter from 
the Grand Lodge of Virginia was also accepted tor No. 4, but with 
the express reservation of all her rights under her Scottish charter. 
About 1800, for some reasons political or social, or both, a number 
of members withdrew from No. 4 and formed American Lodge, 
No. 68, which at one time was very flourishing, and ernbraceclin 
its membership many of our best citizens. But, during the war, it 
became extinct and has never been revived. In the bombardment 
and subsequent sack of Fredericksburg, all of the records of No. 4 
were destroyed or lost except a few imperfect fragments from 1752; 
to 1771. The Lodge meetings seem at first to have been held in the 
private houses of prominent members, and I have from an intelli- 
gent Mason a note to the effect that " the house of Brother Geo. 
Weedon was a favorite place, no doubt, partly from the fact of his 
being liberal in providing refreshments, which was a great consid- 
eration with Masons of ye olden time." The house of Gen. Wee- 
don here spoken, of was the the well-known " Sentry Box " in the 
lower end of Fredericksburg, afterwards occupied* bv Gol. Hugh 
Mercer, and now occupied by W. Boy Mason. Afterwards a room 
for No. 4 was fitted up over the market-house (then standing on Main 
street), and the meetings were held there from June, 1702,"till 1818, 
when the building was torn down preparatory to the erection of the 
present Town Hall and market-house. Then No. 4 held its meetings 
at the "Rising Sun Hotel," the old wooden building still standing 
on Main street, between Fauquier and Hawk streets. Finally, in 
1815, the present Lodge building was completed, which stands on 
the Corner of Princess Anne and Hanover streets. This venerable 
Lodge No. 4 has at various times embraced in its membership emi- 
nent men — soldiers, statesmen and private citizens. Among the 
first was the Father of his country, George Washington, who, in 
this Lodge, received the first degree November 4, 1752, the second 
degree March 3d, 1753 and the third degree An<i,'ust 4th, 1758. 
The Bible used in these ceremonies is still held bv the Lodge in 
good preservation. It was printed at Cambridge, by John Field, in 
1008. Generals Hugh Mercer and George Weedon were also mem- 
bers. By order of No: 4, and by monies" to the amount of $o,000, 
raised by its exertions, a very beautiful and faithful statue of Wash- 
ington" in white marble, was wrought bv the p'feat artist Hiram 



FREDERICKSBURG: PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE. 51 

Power. It was safely transported to Fredericksburg, but ere it 
could be erected the war came on. For safe-keeping it was sent to 
Richmond, and the^e perished in the terrible conflagration of April 
3, 1863. Lodge JS T o. 4 furnished five Grand Masters to the Grand 
Lodge of Virginia, viz: James Mercer, in 1784; Gen. Robert 
Brooke, iu 1705; Major Benjamin JDay from 1797 to 1800 ; Oscar 
M. Crutehfield, in 1741, and Beverly R. Wellford, Jr., (now Circuit 
Judge of Richmond) iu 1877 ; and No. 63 furnished one, viz: John 
S. Caldwell, in 1856. 

In 1873 Fredericksburg Royal Arch Chapter was organized, and 
in 1875 Fredericksburg Commandry JSo. 1, of the order of Knights 
Templar was instituted, of which Col. Robert S. Chew, is worthy 
Commander. Thus three Masonic bodies exist in Fredericksburg, 
each m flourishing condition, and the three are able to confer all 
the degrees in ancient York Masonry. 

There are also in Fredericksburg a number of secret Fraternities 
under the various names of Odd Feilows, Knights of Honor, Knights 
of Pythias, Royal Arcanum, Good Templars, Sons of .Sobriety, and 
Good Samaritans, to all of which, so far as their objects are Chris- 
tian, Charitable and Moral, we wish God speed. 

PRESENT OF FREDERICKSBURG. 

Tims I have sought to present to you the past of Fredericksburg. 
Her present you know as much of as I do. She has still her mod- 
erate and pleasant Climate, her delightful water, her charimnc so- 
ciety, her female beauty, which, I think, no one who has had the 
opportunity of looking over this audience would consider to have 
deteriorated since the olden time ; her picturesque surroundings 
her cheapness in all the necessaries of life. In all these, she is not 
changed ; and in addition to all these, she now has her great Water 
Power, secured by a dam erected by very skilful engineers. This 
Water Power is already in extensive use ; but is capable of farther 
utilization to an indefinite extent. It presents the vast advantage 
of being offered to manufacturers on cheap and easy terms. 

HER FUTURE. 

And as to the future of Fredericksburg in a business point of 
view, I can only express the humble opinion that her best hope 
perhaps I may say her only hope — is in manufactures'. She has lono- 
ago reached and passed the point wherein merchandising proper 



52 FREDERICKSBURG.: PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE. 

that is the mere exchange of goods and wares for money or in barter, 
can support more people within her bounds than are now supported 
thereby. But in manufacturing — that is the application of skilled 
labor to raw material — there is indefinite and wide room for ex- 
pansion. Her water power is all sufficient. And when we recall 
the names, of the past and present times, who have engaged in this 
brave struggle, Joseph Burwell Ficklen and his sons, one of whom 
bearing his name exceeds his father in far-seeing energy; William 
C. Beale, Myer & Brulle, Pettit and his partners ; John G. Hurkamp, 
Charles E. Hunter, and others whom I might name, and see what 
they have already accomplished, I see no reason why the future of 
manufactures in Fredericksburg should not be brighter than the past. 

Bat let us not deceive ourselves with the hope that any success in 
this life will make this life a perfect satisfaction to the soul. If per- 
fect material success should come, it will be attended with draw- 
backs and losses of which we have heretofore known nothing. If 
Fredericksburg should ever become a great manufacturing district 
like Manchester or Birmingham, in England, or like Providence, in 
Rhode Island, or Lowell, in Massachusetts, then the Fredericksburg 
of our fathers will be gone. The spiritual and intellectual stimulus 
will have been diverted into the material and the earthly. The 
individualism once so self-assertive and so attractive here will be 
forced down by the dead level of a rushing current of worldly suc- 
cess and worldly cares. 

Whether this change be in all respects desirable even in Fred- 
ericksburg, I will not undertake to decide. But this I will say, 
that it is not impossible, by the exercise of virtue and industry, to 
make in our much loved old town the happiest medium of mental 
activity, emotional enjoyment and material progress that this world 
can furnish. 



CIRCULAR 

OF THE 

PUBLIC LIBRARY AND LYCEUM ASSOCIATION 

OF FREDERICKSBURG, VA. 

Rev. THOS. S. DUXAWAY, President 

il^l J ? 0, T * ( *UOLR[CK Vice-Presi den-i . 

PETER V. D. CONWAY Sec Y A*i> Treasurer; 

f mv \r SM1TH > Chairman Library Committee. 

. ,.,, Li ' MASON Chairman Lecture Committee. 

SAM'L S. BROOKE Librarian. 

Rooms ok the Association*. June 1, 1880. 

Four years ago a number of tbe citizens of Fredericksburg, lnovelTby a 
strong tohvictiou of its public utility, combined tlieir influence and efforts to 
establish a Public Library and Reading Room lor tbe people of tbe town. 
This people suffered, among otber calamities, the loss of tneir private libraries 
by the ravages of war ; and tbe general impoverishment of tue community 
disabled most of its citizens lrom providing their families with the literature 
needed for their mental and social culture. To supply this pressing need has 
been the endeavor of the promoters of this enterprise. They are £ ratified in 
being able to state that the following important public beuetits have been ac- 
complished by tbe Association: By the co-operation of mauv of the citizens, 
as annual subscribers, and by pecuniary help from a few friends abroad, two 
commodious rooms in the nortii-wing of the Court-house building (donated 
to the use ol the Association by the Common Council), have been ntted up 
m plain and comfortable style, and been maintained as Library and Readin- 
ltooms. By purchase, and by gifts, a Library has been procured, which con^ 
tains a thousand volumes, comprising a valuable collection of works in the 
helds ot History, Biography, Travels, Natural Science, Belle-Lettre, &c. In 
the Reading Uoom a judicious supply of the best American and English 
magazines has been provided. Luring each year, instructive and entertaining 
public lectures have been delivered, under the auspices of the Association. 
lor the small annual tax of three dollars, subscribers and their families enjoy 
the use ot the Library and the Reading Room. It is easy to understand that 
the expence ot maintaining these rooms is considerable, and consumes much 
of the current means of the Society. The people of Fredericksburg have, out 
ot their poverty, done well in aid of the Association ; but their ability to con- 
tinue their aid is very limited. The Association is in urgent need of help from 
mends outside, to insure its permanence and to continue its influences. Its 
gratifying success so far, encourages it to ask and hope for such help. There 
are many sons, as well as former residents of Fredericksbuo-, now scattered 
m all parts ot our country, who feel fondly towards the -old 'Burg" and 
cherish a cordial interest in its welfare. They ean now sjive important ad 
towards the mental culture of its people by contributing to this Association. 

1 here may be large-hearted philanthropists, whenever dwelt here, willing 
to tieip tins laudable work. Gifts of money, or of valuable modern books, 
may be sent to the President and Treasurer. Thirty dollars makes the donor 
a me member. Aid, in sums small or great, will be 'thankfully received. 
a j order of the Association. 

„ , r _ ,. THOS. S. DUX AW AY. President. 

p. V. D. Conway. Trca^n-cr. 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



000E5S3bh7fi 



